YC Research: Universal Healthcare - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-research-universal-healthcare/ <comment><USER4> (Full-time co-founder of a healthcare startup here): W/r/t the US specifically: it seems there is no shortage of inefficiencies and obvious solutions to the inefficiencies in the US healthcare system. To me, the real problem seems to be a system that has almost diabolically evolved to create competing interests that deadlock all sides into a sub-optimal solution. Specifically-- patients, payers, physicians, pharma, facilities and insurers almost all have indirect but competing interests much like the Dining Philosopher's problem we're familiar with in Computer Science.

I'm not sure what the solution is short of a total swamp draining, but our startup went overseas to develop/trial our product in a country with a single payer system. Not perfect, but much more amenable to finding efficiencies.

<comment><USER5> In the united states we can't successfully implement _negotiation on drug prices for MediCare_. They literally can't negotiate with their suppliers. By law.

Anybody thinking software is going to solve that is way in a bubble.

[http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/09/19/the-politics-of- med...](http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/09/19/the-politics-of-medicare-and- drug-price-negotiation/)

<comment><USER6> > In the united states we can't successfully implement negotiation on drug > prices for MediCare. They literally can't negotiate with their suppliers. By > law.

On the flip side, Medicare sets reimbursement rates for services essentially by fiat[0], which can be _below_ the marginal costs of providing service. Most providers cannot legally refuse to treat Medicare patients, so they are forced to accept the rates that Medicare sets (they have no ability to properly negotiate). Medicaid is a whole different system, but in this aspect, it also works the same way.

This turns into a system in which privately insured patients subsidize Medicare patients through their premiums[1] (separately from their tax money, which also goes towards Medicare)[2]. Medicare has no incentive to change this, because it allows them to increase their (effective) operating budget without requiring Congressional approval.

The reason Medicare drug price negotiation was blocked is that people (both pharmaceutical companies and policymakers) were afraid that it would turn out just like Medicare's "negotiated" rates for inpatient and outpatient services.

[0] And private insurers are legally prohibited from reimbursing less than Medicare does

[1] And uninsured patients receive the same (inflated) bills that private insurers receive. (Whether or not they actually pay their bills is a separate matter).

[2] If you've ever wondered why the sticker prices for inpatient services seem so high, this is the underlying reason. Privately insured patients and uninsured patients aren't just paying for their own care (and for the care of others in the same risk pool). They _also_ have to cover the amount of money that providers lose on Medicare and Medicaid patients.

<comment><USER7> > Most providers cannot legally refuse to treat Medicare patients

My understanding is that doctors can choose not to take Medicare patients. Do you have a link or something that explains this?

<comment><USER6> > My understanding is that doctors can choose not to take Medicare patients.

Sort of. For example, most emergency rooms in which physicians have admitting privileges to an associated hospital are required to take Medicare[0]. And those emergency rooms are prohibited from refusing patients based on insurance status. So right off the bat, that's an enormous source of patients who could be publicly insured (Medicare/Medicaid) or uninsured, and they have no legal way to refuse them. (Once a patient is in the ER, if they need to be admitted, you can't (legally!) refuse to admit them based on their insurance status).

I'm kind of oversimplifying, because there are a lot of tricks that hospitals try to use to stop the bleeding - for example, Bellevue is a public hospital, and it operates an emergency room, but its private counterpart that is literally _across the street_ does not. NYU can do some (perfectly legal) maneuvering to keep most of the patient population of Langone limited to privately-insured patients. As a result, Langone has undeniably better[1] care, despite having access to the same set of medical staff[2] and being associated with the same medical college.

It's true that private practices can refuse Medicare for outpatient services easily. And incidentally, many _do_. There's a reason that, except in "critical access" areas[3], most of the top physicians who operate purely private practices don't accept Medicare. However, private practices are a dying breed, so that's a moot point in 2017.

[0] Conversely, free-standing emergency rooms are _prohibited_ from accepting Medicare. A rather cynical view of this would be that Medicare does not want to encourage free-standing emergency rooms, because it's much more difficult to use private emergency care to subsidize Medicare care than it is to use private inpatient care to subsidize Medicare care (the orders of magnitude in costs are vastly different).

[1] More expensive, but _vastly_ better

[2] Well, sort of. Staff isn't shared between the hospitals day-to-day (a nurse at Langone will typically only work at Langone unless he or she also has a job at Bellevue), but the allocation draws from the same pool _a priori_.

[3] Rural hospitals that Medicare pays handsomely, because otherwise those regions would have no medical access at all.

<comment><USER8> > Staff isn't shared between the hospitals day-to-day

It probably is; it's quite common for fair numbers of hospital staff (e.g., OR staff that are needed only for certain types of procedures), AFAIK, to be provided by third-party contractors that provide service to multiple hospitals in the same area, and the same staff may work at different hospitals on different days based on need.

<comment><USER6> > It probably is; it's quite common for fair numbers of hospital staff

Sort of, yes - in NYC, nurses are almost all members of 1199SEIU, for example, and the shift-work nature of nursing makes it easy for them to be employed simultaneously by multiple hospitals. Though my point is that this is usually handled on an individual level (by the nurses who choose where to work), rather than the hospitals themselves directly coordinating staff schedules in tandem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We sell to governments, which is similar to healthcare.

I cannot stress this enough: technology is not the hard part.

Do they have outdated software? Yes.

Can you build better software? Yes.

None of that matters if you can't get it into their hands. Procurement is the hard part. Can you empathize with the needs, fears, desires, quirks, and crazy of ten different stakeholders? Pry proprietary API specs from the cold-dead hands of one-off contractors? Educate users who's technological proficiency peaked at SMS to manage a full-featured SaaS product in 2017?

Don't focus on the software. That isn't the hard part. People are the hard part. People are _always_ the hard part.

<comment><USER10> I think the point of this project is to replace the people, not necessarily to make software for people to use. Software is just means to an end.

<comment><USER11> If that is true, how is a pilot project in the developing world going to help at all in that sense? It doesn't seem like it is particularly relevant to the goal of reducing bureaucracy in the United States. Or do they really believe making a software platform is the missing piece here?

<comment><USER12> I didn't see anything in OP about the goal being to reduce bureaucracy in the United States. Everything in OP seems explicitly global.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, we already discovered a mechanism for drastically reducing the cost of healthcare back in 1986. It's a way of crowdsourcing the problem called _high copays_. Basically, you have to pay out of pocket for 90% of your health care up to a (high) cap.

It turns out that patients are very good at figuring out which health care will improve health and which won't - the high copay group had no statistically significant difference in health from the low copay group, and spent about 30% less money. What a crazy magic bullet, huh?

[http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html](http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html)

We ran a directionally similar experiment in 2008, and got much the same result: low copayment causes people to consume a lot more medicine, but with no objectively measurable improvement in health. (Subjectively, people with insurance _feel_ healthier even if they never go to the doctor.)

[https://www.nber.org/oregon/](https://www.nber.org/oregon/)

In both cases we ignored the result because we don't like it.

<comment><USER14> Almost smells like the ACA, doesn't it?

Edit: My apologies for sounding a bit antagonistic. The ACA is currently making use of high copays for that reason and more. It also hopes to force more transparency as well as most people want more than a icd-10 code when they have to write a check for $4k.

<comment><USER15> Healthcare discussions can quickly devolve into flame wars. Please take extra care to comment civilly and substantially.

<comment><USER14> That's a valid point. I've updated it to be less flippant. Appreciate you bringing that to my attention as there is a lot of great discussion going on in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It boots nothing to subsidize that which is in restricted supply. So long as there are only 350 othodontists allowed to graduate per year, there's a corresponding limit on how many patients are allowed to have straight teeth regardless of who pays for what or what software is used. Improve the software, and the price of orthodontia must still equalize demand to the limited supply.

Offer free dollar bills, and a line will form until the cost of staying in line burns more than $1. Medicine isn't costly because it's inefficient, rather it can end up inefficient because the limited supply means it must _somehow_ end up costly.

It is not possible to solve the healthcare crisis without somewhat deregulating the supply of healthcare and allowing it to increase. Until then, every subsidy just raises the price, and every efficiency improvement just creates room for more inefficiency elsewhere.

You can't solve the housing problem in San Francisco by building more efficient software for selling houses. _Only_ interventions that somehow increase the _total_ supply of living space can cause more total people to be able to live there.

<comment><USER17> The article claims that 40% of the cost is operational inefficiencies, fraud, and ineffective care citing [0]. If all orthodontists are fully occupied and there's no demand being cut, then yes, removing those inefficiencies will just boost orthodontic pay.

But it sounds like at least _some_ of those inefficiencies involve: 1\. People getting unnecessary orthodontic treatments (eliminating those cuts demand [not just quantity demanded]) 2\. People getting ineffective treatments and needing a second treatment (same as 1) 3\. Orthodontists being allocated in a way that lowers their overall productivity--empty time in their schedules, doing stuff they're less skilled at, etc.

If my orthodontist spends less time on administrivia or repeat procedures, he can fix more people's teeth without us training a second orthodontist.

Similarly, if there are apartments sitting empty for a month because it's hard to match people with apartments, better software can fit more people into San Francisco. (Going deeper, my bedroom is empty 12+ hours a day. I could totally sublet it to someone who works the night shift. I just need an efficient system to find such a person who's as interested in saving money as much as I am. Or as much as I was a few years ago. Now, I might not opt for this plan.)

[0] [http://www.who.int/whr/2010/10_summary_en.pdf?ua=1](http://www.who.int/whr/2010/10_summary_en.pdf?ua=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Universal healthcare is already much more cost effective than fully or semi- privitised health care.

Sorry, I forgot to pretend that all the other developed countries haven't figured out healthcare already.

Geez.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Oh and btw, when you have a universal healthcare system payed by taxes (none of that bullshit insurance crap that only ends up being costly regulation/financial bloat) you can have entire and fully private hospitals and health clinics where you can get service for cash, and surprise, surprise, it's ridiculously cheap because it has to compete with the effectively free public healthcare system.

<comment><USER19> >Universal healthcare is already much more cost effective than fully or semi- privitised health care.

That's not true. Most developed countries have some form of privatized system, falling into your 'semi-privatized' definition. It's more cost-effective.

<comment><USER20> In Australia we have a universal healthcare system for everybody and a private system that runs alongside that essentially gets you a more comfortable bed and the ability to jump the queue for non-critical surgery.

<comment><USER21> Even an economic nightmare like Argentina manages to run on the same idea (I grew up there.) The level of complexity and inane amount of paperwork you have to do in the US to get the simplest care is still baffling to me. I get it that it's the inefficiencies that make this system profitable to some, and that's why you might get the "best doctors in the world", but it could definitely use some modernization.

<comment><USER22> All the money involved means that the companies and their lobbyists have too much at stake and have to mobilise against change. Huge shame when it impacts hundreds of millions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is fantastic news. Congrats Watsi!

It has always seemed like this was the end goal; to build a proof of concept healthcare delivery platform for the third world. Very exciting!

EDIT: Sidenote: Thanks YC for funding Watsi as your first non-profit and attempting to tackle a hard social problem.

</comment><comment><USER24> What does this have to do with universal healthcare?

We know how to make healthcare more efficient. We know how to remove the administrative overhead. Other countries already have these systems in place. Look at Taiwan for one example. They have digital medical records and an extremely low administrative overhead because of universal care.

Healthcare will continue to be broken no matter how many YC research programs there are - because the US population lacks the desire and political will for universal healthcare.

<comment><USER25> If you look at polls that go issue by issue, you inevitably come to the conclusion that the "US population" at large (55-60%) would support a broad agenda of social democracy.

The problem isn't the people, it's the politicians. Specifically the Democrats, who refuse to push for anything but the weakest, most ineffective compromise policies.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Then why did people vote for Hillary Clinton and not Bernie Sanders in the primaries?

Honest question from a non-American (in the social democrat Europe, Sanders seemed like the no-brainer option to like 99% of the people I know...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 I applaud this initiative of collecting more data on this, by starting a small trial in an area with fewer confounding factors, and later applying those lessons learned in places with more interconnected systems in place.

One unfortunate fact is that a small proportion of people 'consume' most of the medical care. Operational inefficiencies, the concept of health _insurance_ , a byzantine cost structure, and in the US, after-the-fact billing conceal -- or at least spread out over time -- some of the financial pain of care. This is a sort of societal compromise to avoid confronting the problem: a society either shoulders (i.e. subsidizes) the cost of care for its most unhealthy, or lets them perish outright.

Today, most civilized societies tiptoe around this subject by subsidizing medical care for the elderly for political expediency, where the marginal benefits (even for the particular individual) of life extension until funds finally run out quickly diminish, while leaving folks of prime working age bear a large portion of their own costs in case of misfortune, to say nothing of underserved minorities and the economic poor.

Perhaps the best value of conducting this trial in a developing country isn't solely to get away from the political machinery of a mature healthcare system, but to escape the political baggage of a post-industrial society and see if technological solutions can work if morals and politics aren't in the way.

<comment><USER26> > civilized societies tiptoe around this subject > by subsidizing medical care > for the elderly for > political expediency

It is the same with car insurance. The elderly are almost as bad as drunk drivers for accidents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Healthcare definitely seems like the land of process inefficiency, even in developed countries like here in Canada, so there's plenty of opportunity for major improvement. There's still plenty of paperwork done on... paper, information that constantly has to be repeated when you go from one provider to another, and plenty of mistakes made.

Some time ago Ontario spent a massive amount of money on computerizing healthcare and it yielded nothing. I figure all the regulations, privacy issues, and overall complexity of the system makes it a tough Goliath to handle. And whatever happened to Google Health?

I feel that the solution has to come from the grassroots: get a bunch of health care providers to sync up for certain simple services, and go from there. Keep adding features little by little, keep expanding the number of participants. Do it using published and open source APIs and software. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Break a few rules, ignore some complicated standards if it can help get you there quicker. Hmmm, maybe for the latter to be possible it makes sense to start in less sue-happy countries.

<comment><USER28> What are you basing the yielded nothing on? Canada is well on it's way to Electronic Health Records.

<comment><USER27> It was a big time scandal in around 2009: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ehealth- scandal-a-1b-w...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ehealth- scandal-a-1b-waste-auditor-1.808640)

Things may have changed since.

<comment><USER28> There was a scandal only in Ontario, doesn't mean that good work hasn't been done in that province, or other provinces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have argued in favor of Single Payer systems on the basis of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony) . When buyers don't compete on price, then the price goes down. This is also known as "collective bargaining power".

You can see this borne out in the fact every developed country with a universal healthcare plan gets cheaper prices, often for the same or better outcomes than the USA. Including number of doctors per capita, which disproves the "shortages" myth. Domestically in the USA, Medicare squeezes doctors far more than other insurance companies. A "medicare for all" would do even better.

After the libertarians and anarcho-capitalists try to claim superior economic knowledge eventually they must admit simple supply and demand drives prices down in a single payer system.

But then I get the following objection: what about all the R&D that we do? Perhaps all that expensive health care in the USA results in better procedures and medical equipment, better trained doctors etc. ?

To this I say ... OPEN SOURCE DRUGS! [http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93)

If you can introduce a patentleft movement in drugs the same as you have done in software, then innovations can come from anywhere.

And failing that, we can always do this compensation model: [https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2016/11/properly-valuing- con...](https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2016/11/properly-valuing- contributions/)

</comment><comment><USER30> > For the initial project, Watsi will fund primary healthcare for a community > in the developing world and build a platform to run the system > transparently.

Have they decided what country (or countries) in which this will take place?

While I'm sure there are many worthy candidates worldwide, applying the same type of program to under served communities within the USA would be great as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> Love the ambition. Bring some transparency, reduce fraud, use technology to reduce cost where possible. Great idea, hope it works.

I'm skeptical it could reduce healthcare costs significantly simply because of the massive effort required to change the healthcare behemoth in even small ways. However, given the exorbitant costs of healthcare (currently paying $1800/month for a family of 4), it's worth certainly trying.

Is there a time frame on this experiment?

</comment><comment><USER32> If you went back in time - say, 20 or 25 years ago - and you picked up a progressive, left leaning magazine - say, adbusters or mother jones - <USER2> would very regularly read warnings about the manufactured needs of medicine and healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

Barely an issue of such a periodical could pass without dire warnings of a future in which big pharma and insurance interests would convince us, through advertising, that we were foremost consumers of "healthcare".

What happened ?

The progressive left is now fully, _fervently_ convinced that "healthcare" is a basic priority of human life. It is a rampant consumerism that reaches far beyond - and profoundly deeper - than the fears that good people have always had.

It didn't have to be this way.

<comment><USER33> Healthcare has long been seen as a basic right in many places and even the Republican Party in the U.S. now supports health insurance for everyone.

The parent seems to conflate healthcare with pharmaceuticals and other specific forms of healthcare. IIRC, the warnings were that big pharma was pushing pills on people, something that has some evidence behind it. As an analogy, I think an effective military also is essential, but that doesn't mean I don't think big military contractors don't push needless or dangerous products on the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> _> Watsi's goal is to improve the efficiency of funding, making universal healthcare possible._

Universal healthcare is already possible.[1] Reducing waste is a noble goal but this is a startling sentence from a health tech startup team. It implies that the primary obstacle to universal care is cost, not political will, which fails to comprehend how universal care was achieved in most of the industrialized world.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_unive...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care)

</comment><comment><USER35> >Currently, up to 40% of all healthcare funding is wasted on operational inefficiencies

Your inefficiencies are someone else's revenue.

Or to say another way:

Healthcare is ~20% of US GDP

Reduce spending by 40% would reduce US GDP by almost 10%. That's a tough sell politically you have to admit.

<comment><USER8> > Reduce spending by 40% would reduce US GDP by almost 10%.

No, it wouldn't, because most of that would go straight back to labor and result primarily in increased consumer spending, and secondarily in increased consumer investment (which leads to increased business spending.)

It's not like the money not being spent on healthcare inefficiencies is going to just vanish out of the system.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure. At what point does automation lead to a big drop in GDP?

<comment><USER8> Never; except perhaps when the fact that it results in greater concentration of wealth isn't mitigated and leads to destructive, violent revolution, which cuts GDP.

But that's not really analogous to eliminating health care inefficiencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder what the long-term on this is going to look like. It would seem to me like an amazing irony if the receiving nation ended up with better and cheaper healthcare than the US considering that YC and Watsi call the US home.

<comment><USER37> I imagine they will discover that many efficiencies correlate with individuals as much as with processes and then run out of funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Founder of healthcare startup here too:

This sounds like a great project. I love the idea of building technology for healthcare in a small, controlled, active care environment, and then scaling those tools to a larger audience.

The bigger issue in healthcare IMHO is that the American healthcare model, while hugely inefficient, seems to be the system that best incentivizes innovation. We pay 10x what Sweden pays for medical devices, but the US market is the only reason those device companies can be profitable. If we move to a single-payer system in the US, the economic incentives for innovation go way down.

If someone can figure out how to lower costs, while still providing a profitable market in which drug and device companies can innovate, we'll all benefit.

<comment><USER39> > We pay 10x what Sweden pays for medical devices, but the US market is the > only reason those device companies can be profitable.

Lies, lies, lies, and more lies. This is always quoted, especially in the context of pharma. It's wrong. Americans pay for advertising (which is illegal in most first world countries) and for the yachts and islands of the big healthcare execs.

I work at the intersection of biotech and healthcare. Currently working on a healthcare product that will be rolled out in the EU before the US and will be profitable from day 1 without being "subsidized" by Americans.

<comment><USER38> Being intimately familiar with the COGS and Average Selling Prices of more than a few devices in various geographies, I respectfully disagree. That's not to say you can't have a profitable EU-first product. It's just easier to be profitable with US-first at the moment.

<comment><USER39> Disagree with rolling out a product EU first or disagree that companies need the American healthcare industry to become profitable?

I can't go too much into the product, but there is a solid strategy behind the rollout.

And of course it's easier to be profitable in the US, there is a gravy train of money in healthcare here. While great for healthcare companies, it is AWFUL for consumers.

With respect to the initial comment I replied to, everyone (ie government officials and business owners) claims that changing the US healthcare industry will decimate innovation and every pharma/medical device/etc company will utterly fail!

I've been in this industry less than a decade and have experienced this rhetoric often whenever certain bills come up at the federal and state levels. Everyone freaks out! And then the bill passes....and everything is fine. We just have to innovate a little more, which is a great thing for the consumer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "For the initial project, Watsi will fund primary healthcare for a community in the developing world and build a platform to run the system transparently."

Start with Tuskegee, Alabama, poorest town in the United States.

</comment><comment><USER41> The article doesn't mention which developing country the trial will be in, but South Africa would make an interesting candidate. It has a public healthcare system that's in shocking condition, and a world-class private healthcare system, funded by health insurance, that's becoming more unaffordable (despite being funded and mandated by employers) each year because of high medical inflation. There are clear parallels to the US healthcare system, and the commodities downturn has stymied the government efforts to introduce universal healthcare, so there would be an ideological willingness to experiment.

</comment><comment><USER42> I read the other day that here in Costa Rica the health care 'caja' has 1 employee per 85 people, it's more like working there is the plan. I can't wait to see what Watsi does next.

</comment><comment><USER43> How much of the problem is actually the way (big) pharma conducts research? ( I know that I am over simplifying and dozens of startups are focused on improving the way research is done)

From a manf process standpoint, there are cheaper ways to create these compounds. Generic drug manufacturers have proved that ignoring the cost of research, the drug itself costs next to nothing to make, market and sell.

From an economics standpoint, healthcare costs are a significant part of GDP. In an ideal model if all research is funded directly via government grants and the key research is licensed through a free licensing - It should create a very competitive drug cost model.For a healthcare practice standpoint, legislation can really help. Stripping down some of the malpractice laws are a good starting point.

Additionally, the monopoly on medical education should be broken - <USER3> medical education a national priority is a key step. We also need to make sure, that doctors are not the only healthcare providers. Enabling entrepreneurship among non doctor(nurses, mid wives etc) medical practioners can increase the market supply.

These 2 actions in theory should create more doctors and reduce the cost of practicing medicine.

<comment> temp-dude-87844 Research is expensive because it is conducted by well-paying professionals over multiple years, then taken to several rounds drug trials, which come with risks of serious side effects.

Negative outcomes resulting from drug trials -- as well as approved drugs -- are routinely litigated by the aggrieved parties, which result in expensive settlements or the risk of high damages (in some cases, punitive).

Further, to promote public interest, patent protections on medication in most countries usually expire after 20 years, which limits the window of time in which the makers can recoup the cost.

'Tort reform' proposes (among others) to reduce the monetary risks associated with drug trials by limiting lawsuit payouts of limiting grounds to sue -- to its promoters, this benefits society at large (and the drug companies) while hurting a few individuals who happen to have found themselves embroiled in such a case.

To its opponents, tort reform is an instrument to dismantle regulatory protections and results in little to no societal benefit, perversely incentivizing drugmakers to both a higher absolute quantity of drugs to drive overall revenues, while reducing the average quality of drugs to be less safe, and leave seriously injured people with no viable recourse. It's a complex problem with no easy answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Universal Healthcare is when a society is actually "rich" or "wealthy" in terms of truly having more than enough resources to perform essential care wholesale at no cost to patients,

and after that, when society chooses to prioritize the health care of all its citizens high enough to give equal care to all.

This doesn't usually happen, even in societies where the consistent waste of resources exceeds the total cost of universal healthcare.

Considering the resource shortage or surplus, when healing treatments are not denied to any needy members of society, that could be a fundamental marker of civilization, and an obvious measure of which societies are more advanced and which are more retarded.

</comment><comment><USER45> I was thinking about this lately. Can universal health care be solved by the free market, if the free market decides to enforce checks and balances on itself?

That is to say, could someone start a not-for-profit health insurance company that offers excellent coverage for affordable rates, and build it from the ground up with a culture of clarity and transparency? At a bare minimum they should have a searchable database where you can type in "broken arm" and find out what price this company has negotiated for casts, x-rays, and doctor time, and what it will cost you in co-pay.

It seems like insurance companies are so universally bad and corrupt that there would be no trouble signing up a critical mass of users by simply being a _little_ better than the norm, and once it's the biggest insurance provider in the US, start applying muscle to hospital administration.

Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying it. Can anyone think of a way that it might be possible, though?

<comment><USER46> I'm not at all an expert, but from my limited perspective this looks like a problem that blockchain could potentially help with in the future.

It seems like someone could implement an open source system of smart contracts that automatically pay out healthcare costs and distribute expenses in a transparent and agreed upon way. The organization could have an extremely decreased overhead compared to a physical company because it would need almost no staff or infrastructure, and if everyone can see the source for how money moves as well as the distributed ledger for how spending works it would be highly corruption resistant while still allowing for security of doctor- patient confidentiality due to the encrypted nature of blockchain.

Of course it would by default being extremely susceptible to external abuse, would have a ton of complexities in interfacing with the healthcare system, and wouldn't be viable until/unless blockchain and related tech matures and gains mass market acceptance.

I could be totally wrong about the approach, but I'm really hopeful for the tech world to be able to make a dent in this mess. Hopefully some people with more experience have better ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Good choice for YC research investment.

I hope they don't try to reinvent the wheel in some areas (sounds like it from the post). It would probably be a good idea to benchmark how hard it is to set up a functioning and operational GNU Health system in community X for example.

There's a lot of potential for replacing nothing/no doctors with machine learning, especially in developing countries. Especially in areas where mobile phones are spread I can think of a couple of use cases. Take a picture of your swelling/strange looking skin/whatever and have a classifier tell you what it could be. Last time I checked the algorithms actually beat expert panels (for skin cancer). Could probably be coupled with a "doctor as a service" system that optimizes routes based on this sort of data.

The more I think about it the more I should catapult working in this area up my job application list :)

</comment><comment><USER48> Why can't we import more doctors like UK and other countries in EU. Isn't that a low hanging fruit?

<comment><USER49> Because scarcity raises doctor salaries, and healthcare professionals are very good at organizing and negotiating. HN always gets riled about how H1B visas may lower wages, but doctors actively prevent foreigners from being allowed to practice medicine in their jurisdiction.

<comment><USER6> > healthcare professionals are very good at organizing and negotiating

Hardly - if that were the case, we wouldn't see so many private practices (and even hospitals) going straight out of business.

> but doctors actively prevent foreigners from being allowed to practice > medicine in their jurisdiction.

This isn't really true either - it's true that there are restrictions around practicing (e.g.) in the US without completing a residency here. But contrary to popular belief, that restriction isn't within the control of physicians or any representative body of physicians. And physicians are generally rather apathetic about the topic - they don't like the idea any more than HN likes the idea of foreign developers working in the US, but physicians themselves aren't inclined to take much action on the topic.

<comment><USER49> Doctors without borders disagrees with your assessment in the USA.[1]

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/doctors-w...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/doctors- with-borders-how-the-us-shuts-out-foreign-physicians/382723/)

<comment><USER6> > Doctors without borders disagrees with your assessment in the USA.

Not really - I didn't say that the barriers don't exist. I said that doctors aren't the ones responsible for them.

Requiring one year of residency in the US is not an unreasonable requirement, for a number of reasons. But the bottleneck in the number of residency slots is the funding for them (which is subsidized by Medicare), and doctors aren't even responsible for this requirement anyway.

The AMA, by the way, is _not_ a representative body of doctors - only 25% of doctors actually belong to the AMA.

<comment><USER49> Saying that doctors are not responsible for restrictions on physician training and certification is like saying that banks are not responsible for credit card and payment processing restrictions and regulations. The government is enacting and enforcing the restrictions, but the doctors are campaigning for them (under many different justifications and tactics).

The AMA is like many other trade organizations, in that it often acts as one of many lobbyists for industry interests.

<comment><USER6> > but the doctors are campaigning for them (under many different > justifications and tactics).

My point is that they're _not_ campaigning for them. Either directly or indirectly.

> The AMA is like many other trade organizations, in that it often acts as one > of many lobbyists for industry interests.

The AMA is not really a trade organization, because (a) only a small minority of doctors actually belong to it[0], and (b) they don't really consistently advocate for physicians' interests.

Even the very article you link doesn't really implicate the AMA at the source (or even the enabler) of these restrictions:

> Even if the AMA were to magically produce a few thousand more residency > slots, it would barely make a dent in 91,500 projected doctor shortage.

[0] and most that _are_ members of the AMA aren't members because they want to receive any representation from them, but because AMA membership is required to gain access to the paperwork required for certain types of billing (AMA holds the copyright on the paperwork).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> hospitals are BIG business. They will never let their inefficiencies be addressed by an external force. They do not even share their price lists. Can you imagine going going into best buy and not knowing what anything costs? But having to get the price by researching it on the net?

</comment><comment><USER51> I love this, its like Kiva but for third world healthcare procedures, just fantastic.

They need to make browsing for potential patients easier. After 22 pages of "View more patients" my browser starts to bog down.

A search would be good. As well as a map to select a country to view those in need.

IMO.

But really great startup!

</comment><comment><USER52> > up to 40% of all healthcare funding is wasted on operational inefficiencies, > fraud, and ineffective care.

Any system where the consumers, the providers, and the payers are not accountable to each other is never going to operate efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER53> I love this idea, and this seems like the right way to do it. Operational inefficiencies are a huge burden and it would be great to find a solution for it. I really like the idea of starting this in a small community and scaling up.

</comment><comment><USER54> US spends over $8,000 per capita on healthcare, compared to about $4,000 in UK and Japan, both of which have universal health care.

This isn't a problem tech can solve. It's a problem only politics can solve.

</comment><comment><USER55> I would love to see more transparency in where the costs for dr visits is going. A recent 1/2 hour visit to my daughters doctor for a basic checkup and a couple of shots resulted in a $1500 bill to the insurance company. We paid a fraction of that but it still blows my mind that the bill was so high. I am assuming most of that was for the shots. If watsi can develop software that makes these costs more transparent maybe then we can address ways to lower them.

</comment><comment><USER56> Glad to live in a country that has something close to universal health care. Everybody _needs to_ contribute a monthly share (independent of their condition) which amounts to over 200B per year in total. This seems enough for modern infrastructure, equipment, prophylaxis, medication.

That said, it's not super efficient and the incomes vary greatly between employees with strong lobby groups and laborers covered by legislation only.

</comment><comment><USER57> The prices in the U.S system are wildly divergent from the rest of the world and enhancing international competition is a good way to remedy this. Thus, one way to implement universal health care is to allow import of any prescribed drug and the government will pay for any medical procedure + plane ticket if that cost is less than it is in the U.S. Perhaps a doctor visa would also help with costs.

<comment><USER58> doctor visa is a terrible idea, a) it would undermine the salaries of US doctors, b) it would drain doctors from poor countries where they are needed more than in the US.

<comment><USER59> IIRC, doctors already work on visas, and I don't think you would be 'pulling' doctors from other countries, not unless you're really good, which at that point you're only staying in your home country because you want to, not because you need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > Once the platform is in place, Watsi will start to experiment with improving > the quality of care and reducing the cost – e.g., by streamlining > operations, minimizing waste and fraud, and identifying medical errors in > real-time.

That sounds like any politician ever, campaigning for office by promising to do the above, for government in general, the Defense or Energy or Education department, etc.

Good luck, and I sincerely hope it works. This time.

</comment><comment><USER61> I think the problem with our health care system is economic and political, not technological; unless you are talking about some new revolutionary technology like this: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207092724.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207092724.htm)

</comment><comment><USER62> Pardon my cynicism, but I don't like the idea of choosing a patient you're going to "spend your money on" as a replacement for a basic universal healthcare. Healthcare shouldn't be a popularity contest. As an addition to a normal "basic" healthcare it's fine, but please don't replace existing systems with this stuff.

<comment><USER63> I urge you to read the announcement. Watsi is going into a different space than before - integrated healthcare (including preventive action) as opposed to their traditional funding a single patient model.

<comment><USER62> You're right, I got the bad habit of skipping blog posts and going directly to the main website when the announcement was the actual news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm a patient with an auto-immune disorder. I'm going to share some of my lessons/surprising things I learned in healthcare/drug discovery.

I did YC fellowship with a healthcare startup in the clinical trials space. I am one of Watsi's biggest fans(zero hedge) and excited to see them go after this.

Here's some hard things I learned over 8 months entrenched in industry, meeting everyone from Hospital execs to drug development experts.

* The top of the funnel is screwed by food environments in the USA. Completely preventable metabolic syndrome accounts for a large percentage of clinical trials research.

* One of the unfortunate realities in the USA is that a lot of our advanced drug research is financed by metabolic syndrome related drugs. There's 8K clinical trials a year and a non-trivial percentage are from metabolic syndrome related problems.

* We have a patent system that encourages developing drugs that interact with a small number of enzymes and molecules that we already know and understand how they operate. Low, if not zero risk.

* The rules around patenting pathways, treatment methodologies, research tools, and assays are flawed/seem poorly designed. As an outsider looking in, these things seem like a paralyzing bottleneck for the industry. These need to be looked at much closer.

* GPO Squeezing. The manner in which GPOs squeeze medical device companies to create an artificial monopoly and drive prices up has to be examined in a much closer way.

* Ground game & Synthetic chemistry- The reason startups in the pharma space get acquired based on my dicussions with R&D folks at multiple Fortune 500 pharma companies is two fold. 1/ The drug companies have enough sales reps to push product fast. There's massive room for some sort of disruption here to allow small scale medical device and pharma startups to push product. 2/ This one's tough, but the large pharma companies have enough money to do all the synthetic chemistry to go from lab to scale. That's changing though. What used to be a $400M requirement has shifted to a $100M requirement, but we'll see how this evolves. It's a lot different from software. The know-how is extremely well hidden behind private walls.

* Aggregated healthcare and genomic data has little value. There's 68,000 genetic marker tests on the market and 8-10 new ones come out each day. Knowing what they do and/or how they create proteins that block/assist efforts is a monstrously tough problem that isn't waiting for computation, but is waiting for actual experiments on humans.

* The mathematical complexity of drug discovery is hard. Even if the data is maximized, the throughput of discovery is low. We have 7Bn people, 15K diseases, and 3Bn genetic base pairs. Bonferonni Corrections and Family wise error rate abound. We're not waiting for super computers or for an ease of aggregating data.

* The tricky part of selling to hospitals is that you have to create ROI within 6 months.

If anyone here is building a healthcare venture or drug discovery venture and believes I can help, don't hesitate to reach out.

Godspeed.

<comment><USER64> I'm wrong on a few elements of this. [https://twitter.com/datarade/status/829181877915234304](https://twitter.com/datarade/status/829181877915234304)

So much for vetting out naivete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Would there be legal issues (apart from political will) with forming a publicly owned health insurance company for the general public in the US, rather than a subset like Medicare etc?

It seems that if you just form a large enough public insurer it could soon start undercutting the prices of the private insures.

</comment><comment><USER66> In Central Europe triple bypass hearth surgery costs ~ $6000. Until you fix the cost, there is no help.

</comment><comment><USER67> Great news. Once it gets going I'd be interested in seeing the strategy to make it sustainable. I believe donation models are inherently _unsustainable_ so it'll be a challenge.

</comment><comment><USER68> Cool and interesting. I'm not very familiar with Watsi, but is its innovation mainly in business processes for healthcare non-profits - mainly improving information and resources flows?

<comment><USER23> [https://watsi.org/about](https://watsi.org/about)

They accept donations to fund healthcare for people in the third world, while being radically transparent (there is a Google Docs link out there with the details for every procedure they've funded).

They're also exceedingly good at weeding out fraud, and are transparent about that as well (when fraud has occurred, the resolution, and how they fix the problem moving forward).

They are, quite frankly, how you would build a single payer healthcare system as a startup.

<comment><USER68> Thanks for the information! Your concluding sentence is really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I really wish Congressmen didn't have federal healthcare, and they had to use the same insurance us plebeians use. That would help them fix up the system real fast.

<comment><USER8> > I really wish Congressmen didn't have federal healthcare, and they had to > use the same insurance us plebeians use.

They do; through 2014, like other federal employees (and most employees of large businesses) they had a choice of the private plans contracted by their employer. Since 2015, they've been limited to ACA exchange plans.

[http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/health-care-for-members- of-...](http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/health-care-for-members-of-congress/)

<comment><USER69> Ah I didn't know that. Super cool, thanks for sharing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> TIL: US healthcare is completely nuts

</comment><comment><USER70> Invest in value-based healthcare - it's the future (in like 15-20 years, that is)

</comment><comment><USER71> GNU health is a good starting place

</comment><comment><USER72> Healthcare isn't truly 'universal' until it is also applied to non-humans.

<comment><USER73> Uh.... can we go over what you mean here?

<comment><USER72> Animals

<comment><USER74> Next time a non-human asks me where it can find a doctor, I'll take it to the vet myself.

<comment><USER72> Do infants ask?

<comment><USER74> Infants usually have individuals called "guardians" who we accept as responsible for their healthcare.

The ones that don't probably have bigger problems than access to healthcare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Unless you remove people out of the equation, universal healthcare will never work. There's no incentive for anyone to be efficient, more frugal, work harder, provide a better service in universal healthcare. Humans arent wired for this.

<comment><USER8> > Unless you remove people out of the equation, universal healthcare will > never work.

Every OECD nation except the US has universal healthcare; many have generally comparable outcomes and all have lower costs (both per capita and as a share of GDP) when compared to the US.

So, I'm not sure what your binary standard of "work/not work" is, but universal healthcare can and often does work better than what we have in the US.

<comment><USER76> America is really interesting in that it traps people in jobs via healthcare (and other things, but health care is a big one).

I spent over a year backpacking after being out of the US for four years. I never worried too much about health care, because the few times I needed to go to a doctor, they'd tell me prices up front for uninsured foreigners. In one country, even though I wasn't a resident, my work visa did give me a discount.

I've been back in the US for a year and want to go a big road trip. I have a ton of savings, but my health care is terrible. I got a contract job with a $19/week "minimal effective coverage" plan (preventative only; the 'legal for less' type car insurance plan that is ACA approved).

After three months they gave me the PPO plan options which started at $400/month. Thankfully I haven't broken an arm, but in the 12 months working and not getting on that overpriced PPO plan, I've saved enough money even after tax that I could probably pay for a broken arm out of pocket.

I looked at ACA plans, but they were $200+/month with $6k deductibles. By not going that route, I've saved enough to actually pay that deductible.

When I quit my job this spring, I _might_ be able to get a real plan by saying my yearly income was what I earned up to that point. But I don't plan on staying in this state at all, or any state for more than 2 ~ 3 weeks after. Since so many of these plans are tied to states/networks, what good is that anyway?

In the US you have to work .. work work work just to have basic health care. Either that or just be desperately poor. No other high income country requires this. They take care of all their people.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Livecoding Indian Rhythms - <AUTHOR> http://arthurcarabott.com/konnakkol/ <comment><USER2> This is cool! I read your article about musical faders some time ago as well [1]. It's great that you are thinking about what music can look like on computers in this free way.

[1] [http://arthurcarabott.com/mui/](http://arthurcarabott.com/mui/)

</comment><comment><USER3> OP: you may want to post this to /r/musictheory on Reddit. I have a feeling it will be appreciated by the music geeks there.

That said, it is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really, really cool! What would be a nice feature, especially for longer rhythms, is highlighting the currently played syllable/phrase

</comment><comment><USER5> Really cool.. Please highlight what is currently being played, will make it even better.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is brilliant!!!

<comment><USER6> Did you record the sounds yourself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Genius!</comment>


Microsoft releases tool for creating Windows 8 apps in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.touchdevelop.com/app/

<comment><USER3> To add some context to the title, this isn't a traditional IDE in the browser.

It's a kind of experimental touch-centric IDE with it's own semi-visual programming language (your not exactly dragging boxes around, but your not editing text either).

I only played with it for 2 minutes, but it's apparent that this is a "research" project. It's not meant as a replacement SDK for whatever is the de facto standard for Win8 apps.

<comment><USER4> Yep, this started as an app on WP7 from MSR. You could download and share various scripts/apps. The app was a little clunky but neat.

<comment><USER5> The first version was called "TouchStudio."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very impressive.

I got further with this in fifteen minutes on my iPhone lying in bed than an hour last night with the Windows Phone 8 SDK.

The APIs seem nicely designed and the interface works surprisingly well on a phone. I haven't seen anything else as likely to democratize programming since Click 'n Play back in the 90s.

It would be nice to see some kind of automatic wrapper facility for the full API, even if the syntax became necessarily horrible and it was hidden behind an expert panel. Sooner or later every large project will want to step beyond the bounds of the current garden, I think.

<comment><USER7> Oh Microsoft... so it works on iOS Safari, but not on their own Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 8 :(

<comment><USER8> For windows phone 7 and 8 there is a native free app in the marketplace. Try that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The typical mode of operation is developing apps in TouchDevelop and running them in TouchDevelop, in the browser (or the WP7 app). If you want, you can also export the apps and sell them in the store, but you will need a dev account.

TouchDevelop is a research project exploring programming paradigms that are more touch-centric.

Think of it as a way of programming your phone or tablet, whatever it may be, on the device itself.

<comment><USER10> Will Microsoft be seriously backing the TouchDevelop project as a commercial effort? (ie. marketing it to developers and cultivating a community?)

I have the feeling TouchDevelop is what a next generation IDE should feel like. Not just with the touch-friendly editor, which is nice, but also how the rest of the IDE is constantly reacting to what is happening in the editor.

Is the web-app a subset of the WP7 project? Will it be possible to define types like the 'Board' type in the demo? Perhaps by linking to javascript(/typescript) libraries? (the library functionality didn't work for me in Chrome so I assume it's just not implemented yet)

Congratulations on creating a truly impressive IDE :)

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

TouchDevelop is a research project, and as of now there are no plans of full- scale productization.

The webapp supports all programming language features of the WP7 app (and some more ;-). Not all library APIs are implemented though (some are obvious - <USER2> doesn't make phone calls - some are just still missing).

If something didn't work with the libraries for you, let us know!

It is possible to define record types (with fields but not methods). You can also define libraries operating on these. Libraries can be parametrized, much like functors in ML (but without the heavy type system). The interaction between records and libraries is not fully worked out yet, but we're working on it, time permitting.

Note that TD is not an object-oriented language - there is no inheritance or subtyping. I myself intend to keep it this way :) Still, we want to have something akin to C#'s extension methods as far as the syntax goes (i.e., method lib1->m(x:t,y:number) could be invoked as x->t(10)).

<comment><USER10> I can understand not wanting inheritance or subtyping, but then I think the language needs at least first class functions. Extension methods would be great. Perhaps you could have typeclasses like in Haskell?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In order for Windows 8 to be a success from an app development standpoint, MSFT needs to make their apps the easiest to develop. Their SDK must be the best. They should have starter projects, and go crazy on supplying developer resources & starter apps. They need to make apples development & submission process look and feel outdated.

Windows is and will remain a huge OS with a ton of opportunity, but MSFT needs to do a better job incentivizing developers to build apps. Make it the easiest platform to get started with.

<comment><USER12> Developers want a market (consumers), consumers want content (by developers). A classic chicken-egg feedback loop.

Easier to develop apps is just one point that can ease the feedback loop, but its not sufficient...nor is it shockingly necessary (just look at Apple).

Disclosure: MSFT employee, just sharing what I've learned about platforms (and what many probably already know).

<comment><USER13> Learning curve != ease. The niceness of Cocoa Touch is one of the things that keeps me working on Apple's platform.

<comment><USER12> My point was that barriers don't matter much when you have a healthy market to receive your app. So while we might work on lowering barriers, its all for not if the store is a ghost town. This is very humbling to us PL/tools researchers.

What keeps you working on Apple's platform is the popularity of the app store, if you couldn't get customers; you would leave in a heart beat for a platform that had a healthier market. Look at all the people who learned Objective C...not because it was the best language, but because it was a technical barrier that was necessary to overcome to access a healthy market (and technical barriers are much easier to overcome than market barriers!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"Sign in using your account on: Windows Live, Facebook, or Google"_

Wow, that's really inclusive! I don't see Google or Apple reciprocating anytime soon...

I wonder if Google credentials can also be used to submit the final app in the Windows Marketplace.

<comment><USER15> I actually use my Google email address to log into my Windows account too - they know we don't want yet another email address to manage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> BOOM. It's moves like this that are going to ensure that Windows 8 prevails in the end. I hate to make the comparison, but Microsoft's only competitor is Apple and now that Jonny Ive is helping out with the design aspects of not just the products but interfaces, Microsoft have forced Apple's hand so-to- speak.

I doubt we'll be seeing Apple make a web-based touch interface for building applications, but it'll no doubt force them to consider something because Microsoft are starting to make me even consider trying to build an app. And out of a C based language and web based builder, which has the lesser learning curve?

Very smart move. Well played, Microsoft.

<comment><USER17> I think you're being a little too optimistic here. There is no shortage of web-IDE or foo-Touch on any platform. They're all poping up for all the platforms at the same time, this is not some edge Windows 8 has over other platforms. (If there is any edge at all, it's probably Visual Basic 5.0 or later)

Windows 8 will succeed not because it has a web-based toy for making toy apps, but because people still want to run Windows95 applications.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, there are lots of tools like this around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've only really seen screenshots of metro but this app looks like a bad recreation. Are the colors usually that bright and are the fonts that padded?

<comment><USER20> This is admittedly poorly executed and doesn't really follow a lot of metro conventions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was a very smart move on Microsoft's part. They recognized and accepted the fact that almost all the developers behind the most popular apps on Android and iOS are running OS X. Releasing an OS X IDE to cater to those developers would have been admitting defeat to Apple in that arena, so they cleverly sidestepped the issue by just creating a web-based IDE instead.

<comment><USER22> Could you please provide some hard numerical reference that shows that "almost all the developers" that produced "the most popular apps on Android and iOS are running OS X". That would be a great cross referenced treasure trove of data. It seems absurd and borderline illogical that one does not come to have contact with such a fountain of proof that supports the stated inference. This would be an invaluable source. Thank you in advance.

<comment><USER23> I'm not saying that asking for hard proof is ever a bad thing, but I will say that it's not illogical to make this claim without.

Anecdotally, I know exactly 1 programmer TOTAL that does not use a mac laptop when they develop out of the dozens that I know, and he just got hired at Microsoft. I know several that use Windows desktops, but exactly 1 that doesn't have a mac laptop.

<comment><USER22> Small detour; logic is a funny thing because it can be countered by insufficient measures of extent and intent even when it is expressed in the form of presentable proof. So assuming a counter point of view would also be acceptable by your own process of reasoning if an anedoctal could express it. That tells me you recognize your own confirmation bias and so should I recognize mine.

Had the poster said "the majority" instead of "almost all" it would have been much more agreeable to my own impression and my own limited anedoctal experience wich makes up the extent.

But I do take your response in the same good candid nature that you meant it. Still, a cross referenced data set on this you proposed would be amazing.

<comment><USER23> I'd like that too actually. Personally I think the fact that devs I know feel like they HAVE to have a Mac is a sign that Apple's growth is possibly not finished. w

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a re-release from MS their secret weapon; <http://rise4fun.com/>. MS research is really good and they are working on important things other companies ignore. I think Norvig is not ignoring them but working on them from a totally different angle which will roll out in the coming years, but that's offtopic.

</comment><comment><USER25> The on-screen keyboard reminds me of the good ol' days of ZX Spectrum (each key had a command assigned to it, you typically wouldn't type the commands but press the corresponding button)

<http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/zx-spectrum_keyboard.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER26> So I signed in, going to change my username and it says 'nickname is too short' (at least 8 characters). I uploaded my avatar image, it says 'Only proper JPEG files allowed' :(

<comment><USER27> If this was a social network, I'd understand your frustration. It's a developer tool tho — not sure what you expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one who finds the design and layout totally confounding on their desktop browser?

Might flow smoother on a touch tablet?

</comment><comment> saint-loup It seems very nice. It was originally an app for Windows Phone 7 [1], released something like one year ago.

[1] [http://www.windowsphone.com/fr- fr/store/app/touchdevelop/fe0...](http://www.windowsphone.com/fr- fr/store/app/touchdevelop/fe08ccec-a360-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8)

</comment><comment><USER28> EDIT: I'm wrong. See Dan's helpful reply about exporting to a Windows 8 app.

\---

I think the title is wrong. This doesn't look like it has anything to do with creating Windows 8 apps.

<comment><USER29> It's accurate. Once you create an app and publish it, you'll find an "Export to Windows Store" button. You need to sign up for a developer account and download the SDK (part of Visual Studio 2012 Express, free) to publish to the store, but this site will do all the work of giving you the app to publish.

<comment><USER30> Does that mean it only runs on Windows 8 Pro, or does it also run on Windows RT devices?

<comment><USER9> TouchDevelop runs in IE10, Chrome (including on Android), Firefox, Safari (on Mac and iOS). You can run apps you create right away, inside TouchDevelop, in the browser.

If you want to sell them, then they will run on Windows Phone, Windows RT and Windows 8. To submit them to the store you will need a Windows 8 PC and a dev account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Still, I wouldn't say this <http://imgur.com/pUlXu> is the best way to drive adoption amongst the Microsoft faithful. Yes I know they need to draw the line somewhere, and IE9 (maybe IE anything... haven't tried 10) sucks, but this is quite a departure from the general Windows stance of "backwards compatibility at all costs" (why their hosts file still lives in an 'etc' directory is beyond me, for example).

Additionally, if you have cookies disabled it just sits there on the loading screen (in FF 17 at least) - I thought it was just broken at first.

<comment><USER32> It's a research project, not an actual product MS wants to sell. So how is this different from the dozens or hundreds of bleeding-edge experiments that demand a current version of Chrome/FF to work and refuse to do anything on any other browser?

<comment><USER31> As I said in my comment, it's not how Microsoft have done things, ever. IE10 isn't even shipping as a final product for the most widely deployed version of Windows, and Windows 8 has basically no market share.

The difference with Mozilla and Google is I don't need to migrate my entire OS to use their experimental stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33>
        TouchDevelop Wep App Preview does not work with Opera.
        Please use Internet Explorer 10, Chrome or Firefox.

Why?

<comment><USER34> There's always a post like this. Who gives a shit about Opera at this point? It's hard enough making a complex web app work on IE, Chrome and Firefox as it is.

<comment><USER35> When they take away opera they will take away firefox, then they will take away the next one. One day we will all be using chrome.

I think they should warn about compatibility but allow us to proceed anyways. Often when I spoof opera to identify as firefox everything works fine. The `built only for this browser` scheme treats the browser as the platform and not the internet as the platform. I understand the practical motivation for perspective, having spent many hours making sure my design worked in IE and Firefox, but I dream of a world where every-browser will render things identically.

Ultimately, its called a webpage not a chromepage.

<comment><USER34> Not buying this slippery slope argument at all. Nobody has ever cared about opera. Wake me up when people stop supporting Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> First my mom learns to use an Ipad, next she's hacking together a recipe book for her phone. Developers are losing their monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this kinda like Google's App Inventor (before they gave up on it and gave it to MIT) ?

</comment><comment><USER38> Uncaught SyntaxError: Variable 'handler' has already been declared

that's what i get when i try to run that thing.

<comment><USER39> They definitely need some js error tracking tool (like qbaka.net) to handle errors. Their main javascript size is 420K!

<comment><USER40> Thanks for the recommendation. We (I am in the TouchDevelop team) have an excellent crash tracking system in place, and whatever issues you see today might be fixed tomorrow. If you are curious how we build TouchDevelop, you can watch this video from a session at the recent Build conference: <http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-018>

<comment><USER39> Thank you for the link. I am curious and will try to find an hour to watch the video. Do you mind if I contact you by email (already googled it) to ask some questions about your error tracking? It seems that you do not use window.onerror so I wonder how exactly you track unhandled errors. Your experience may help me with my project.

<comment><USER40> Sure, send me an email. We might be missing out on some errors, appreciate any kind of feedback, and maybe can give some advice too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


EBay is saving archeology by killing the antiquities market - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/05/ebay-is-saving-archeology-by-killing-the-antiquities-market.ars <comment><USER2> The summary is pretty good, but the actual article is available and isn't much longer: <http://www.archaeology.org/0905/etc/insider.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand if someone makes a fake de-novo, and passes it off as antique - that can really mess up knowledge of the past.

But what is the difference between a replica of an item made today, and an item made in the past, if both are made by exactly the same methods?

They are identical - both were made by humans, both are made of the same thing, and by the same method, just one had some time go by. Why does that matter?

<comment><USER4> One of them has a story, the other doesn't. People care deeply about stories.

<comment><USER5> Yes. As an interesting aside, some famous forgeries acquire their own stories.</comment></comment></comment>


Expired ssl certificate for airbnb.com - <AUTHOR> https://airbnb.com <comment><USER2> www.airbnb.com and other sites aren't affected, so it seems like this will mostly affect people who specifically type in [https://airbnb.com/](https://airbnb.com/)</comment>


Adobe Flash 11 is now stable for 64-bit Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer.html I can't find a press release specifically mentioning it yet. Download adobe apt/repo file from here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/ <comment><USER2> Since I'm running Ubuntu, I decided to try the 'download for Ubuntu' option on the download form. It went down like this:

\- Firefox asked me whether I wanted to launch the 'apturl' tool. I accepted its suggestion.

\- I got a dialog saying "This will enable the Canonical Partners repository". I'm pretty sure I already had it enabled, but sure, what the hell.

\- I got the usual 'downloading updated package lists' dialog.

\- I got an error dialog complaining that 'adobe-flashplugin' is a purely virtual package.

And that was that.

Guess it's back to trusty ol' tarballs.

<comment><USER3> At least in debian:

        sudo update-flashplugin-nonfree --install

works flawlessly.

<comment> mike-cardwell I think his point was that he followed the instructions, and they failed. If he had been using Windows, he'd have followed the instructions and succeeded. This is the problem with Linux.

FWIW, I currently run Ubuntu on my laptop, and very much like it, Windows 7 on my work desktop, and my previous laptop ran OSX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> No press release specifically mentioning the 64-bit Linux support, but it's out!

You can download the yum repo/apt repo files as well as the rpm and tar.gz files from here: <http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/>

Edit: or on the page linked above, click the grey almost-hidden download button on the right.

</comment><comment><USER4> In other words, "How to hide a download button". Talk about the disconnect between graphic design and web design.

</comment><comment><USER3> And it's still rather far from being mature.

Debian squeeze x64 user of Chrome with nvidia-* 260.19.44-1 drivers here.

For instance go to:

<http://flashbuilder.eu/flash-player-version.html>

1\. RBM on flash content, Settings. Now try to set anything with mouse (i.e. w/o using keyboard, especially Tab + Space).

2\. RBM on flash content, Zoom in. How much of the view has been redrawn?

Now let's go to vimeo:

<http://vimeo.com/27870776>

And HD video still doesn't play smoothly and it's sometimes off-sync. My desktop (<http://wiki.przemoc.net/about/my_hardware>) surely isn't top-notch one, but outside of Flash world I can use it to watch 1080p50p video material, so something is wrong with Flash, and it's even worse in Linux department, unfortunately.

<comment><USER5> All of these things (1. + 2. + HD video) have been working for me for a long time. YouTube 1080p content works fine, though I kind of doubt it's using VDPAU, so it's bound to hit the CPU (4x 1.9GHz i5, hardly cutting edge) fairly hard. I'm using the 64bit flashplayer 11 from the sevenmachines ppa.

Are you using Chrome or Chromium? Chrome comes with its own flash version.

<comment><USER3> I use a beta version of Google Chrome (latest 15.0.874.81 beta) from official repo (deb <http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/> stable main). I remember it was shipped with Flash, but it worked not as good as I would like it to, so I was using 64-bit betas (not great either, to be honest), IIRC by disabling Chrome's own Flash in about:plugins. Now looking there I see only one Flash plugin, which is the one installed in my system (Location: /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so). So even if Chrome's custom Flash is better, as you imply, dunno how to turn it on for a test ride now.

Also

        dpkg --contents google-chrome-beta_15.0.874.81-r103858_amd64.deb | grep -i fl

reveals nothing.

<comment><USER5> I didn't mean to imply that Chrome's custom Flash is better. I have no idea if it is since I run Firefox (typically) and Chromium (rarely). Like I said, I use the 64bit Flash player from the sevenmachines ppa (Ubuntu 11.04).

<https://launchpad.net/~sevenmachines/+archive/flash>

<comment><USER6> Chrome's custom Flash is better, because the Chrome generic plugin code is not very good. And that is due to [the plugin API being very complicated and full of bugs -- [http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/05/plugins...](http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/05/plugins- diagram.html) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When will it be stable for OS X?

I'm not joking.

<comment><USER8> Amen. I'm sick of my laptop sounding like a 747 every time I look at a video.

<comment><USER9> > Amen. I'm sick of my laptop sounding like a 747 every time I look at a > video.

The iPhone Simulator gets my MacBook Air "sounding like a 747" as well. Since it isn't made in Flash, I'm left to conclude that:

        1) any program that is demanding will cause the fan to come on; and
        2) it shouldn't be a big surprise that Flash will cause the fan to come on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The YUM download went off without a hitch on Fedora. Still requires you go in and do a

        yum install flash-player

assuming you had the old i386. It seems to have appropriately replaced the adobe-linux-i386 yum conf file as well with the newer one.

</comment><comment> robert-boehnke Does that include the fancy Unreal Engine stuff, too?

For example, this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y>

<comment><USER11> No. flash 11 won't have GPU acceleration on linux. Adobe said there were too many driver issues.

<comment><USER12> Flash is a product by Adobe. It's not an open standard. Adobe is only one company with limited resources. It's time to uninstall it and move on.

<comment><USER13> Move on to what?

<comment><USER12> To open standards? I uninstalled Flash a couple of weeks ago. That's the first step. Every few days I hit some video that I wish I could watch. Sometimes I reach for my iPad to watch it. You would think since I can watch it on my iPad, the site could detect that I don't have Flash and use another codec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With respect to Mr Jobs, it's nice to finally see a story up that _isn't_ about him.

<comment><USER15> Flash isn't the best story to start with :-\

<comment><USER16> Speaking as a Linux user, this is as significant as the first time I got sound to work. Flash on Linux (especially 64 bit) has been horribad. Hopefully it's less bad now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's nice. Now hopefully they will _maintain_ it.

</comment><comment><USER18> This worked for Fedora 14:

        # cat /etc/yum.repos.d/adobe-linux-x86_64.repo

        [adobe-linux-x86_64]
        name=Adobe Systems Incorporated
        baseurl=http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/linux/x86_64/
        enabled=1
        gpgcheck=1
        gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

        # yum install flash-plugin

</comment><comment><USER19> Hehe, "stable"

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess that means I can finally get rid of the 32 bit libraries. Yeah!

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll be the judge of that.

</comment><comment><USER22> does this mean that a video doesn't trigger 100% CPU usage anymore? can't wait to try it

<comment><USER23> Depends on the video, the CPU, the GPU, and how the video is displayed in Flash, but yes, it should work better, more often (though I'm not sure the 64-bitness is that relevant compared with the other stuff).

<comment><USER5> It is. The nspluginwrapper used to run the 32-bit Flash in a 64-bit Firefox (dunno if it also applies to other browsers) really slowed things down. I got much better performance running the 64-bit plugin, all other things -- including the Flash version number -- being equal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember installing Flash on Debian about 4 years ago and wishing there was a 64 bit version so I didn't have to clutter up the system with another version of Firefox or the 32bit bridge libraries. Glad to see that this was resolved though.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't bear the pretentiousness of this video. The filler clips are so overdone, from the high-aperture clip of the can of Canada Dry Ice and whatever else it was by the guy's computer mouse to the nerf guns to the shot of a very typical Command Prompt screen in Matrix green. They're trying so hard.

</comment><comment><USER26> Dear Adobe:

Just because he's dead doesn't mean the rest of us don't still want your proprietary garbage off the web. We've seen the future, and it's not yours.</comment>


Metaprogramming in RubyMotion - <AUTHOR> http://clayallsopp.com/posts/rubymotion-metaprogramming/

<comment><USER2> This sort of hack is easy enough with ObjC and blocks, but is generally avoided due to introducing significant issues with clarity.

</comment><comment><USER3> But, if trying to eliminate cruft, why include define_singleton_method? Why not just set the proper scope and define_method? Same with instance_eval, class_eval (and module_eval maybe?)- why not just set the scope to define whether you are in instance, class, eigenclass, etc. and use instance_eval? Not a criticism, but a serious question if the goal is to pare it down.

<comment><AUTHOR> By cruft I more literally meant the fact that MRI being interpreted means a hit on performance, not necessarily syntactical cruft. Perhaps I should have chosen my words differently :)

RubyMotion is aiming to be a more complete implementation of Ruby, and one of the core ideas of Ruby is "there's more than one way to do it." Whether you agree or disagree is outside the bounds of RubyMotion and maybe even Ruby IMO; ultimately, whether or not more techniques than scoping define_method are allowed is something that can and should be done a per-project basis.

Food for thought, I found this article detailing all the ways to add singleton methods, in varying levels of grokability: [http://wowkhmer.com/2011/01/15/different-ways-to-define- sing...](http://wowkhmer.com/2011/01/15/different-ways-to-define-singleton- methods-in-ruby/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does delegating well make your team suck at customer service?  - <AUTHOR>

One of the core skills of being a manager is to delegate to your team and delegate well. Done well, you fully explain the goal what you want to happen, why it needs to be done and an overview of how. You may need to manage the process a bit and even micromanage parts of the process. This is how most textbooks explain that delegation should work. However, I think that this just breeds a team of people who need to be "delegated" to in order to get stuff done. As a customer, getting great customer service means you don't have to think. It means that you don't have to "delegate", you just expect it gets done. This means that your team needs to be able to take vague instructions and run with them. They need to be able to probe, to identify the exact requirements and get it done. They can't expect the customer to do the work. I am almost convinced that babying your team when delegating hurts their ability to develop the skills needed to provide great customer service. Am I insane or am I on to something? <comment><USER2> Delegating lots of tasks frequently doesn't equate to good delegation. In fact it's bad - it's highly inefficient.

I think micro-managing often implies a lack of trust where you're not sure an employee will 'do the right thing' to resolve a customer issue.

Really with a team you should be constantly letting them take more responsibility & resolving unusual instances together, this means you never have to repeat instructions for the same task twice. Continue long enough & you are only pulled into the loop for the odd anomaly.

I think this way of working builds great morale within a customer service team. The best managers remove obstacles for their team which enables them to provide awesome service.

Sometimes, simply asking your team "what common tasks are we're duplicating brain power on?" "where can I give you more responsibility?"

You may find the answers you get are really simple to implement, like "allow me to issue refunds under $10 as I ask you 10x per week for this"

Sure, maybe you get them to keep a refund log & you review it weekly but it shows that with good performance they'll create a role where they are free to use their initiative without fear of being punished.

If you create a culture where they continually look to you for instruction they are never going to step outside of that. An efficient support team needs to be lead by example.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are companies that already do this and remove "managers" altogether.

Example: <http://vimeo.com/43676958> (Github)

There are many others. It all depends on the type of company and culture. The exact things that work for Github may not work for other companies in that _exact_ form but there are obviously ways to do so in different fields, etc...

</comment><comment><USER4> Delegation is actually a skill that only works when the end user/customer does not even see it happening necessarily.

A successful manager _must_ delegate. But "delegation well" does not just mean you explain the goal, the why etc. A good manager knows who to delegate to, when to delegate and when not to delegate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Curious in the responses you'll hopefully get.</comment>


Ask HN: Programming job interview books? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to start interviewing for c++ programming jobs. I haven't been on a technical interview in 6 years. I'd like to start studying 1-2 problems each day, work through them and see what I know easily and what I don't. Even after 25 years of c++ I still get nervous about interviews. I read the Stroustrup and Meyers books when they come out and I tend to understand them.<p>I'd like a real, rubber hits the road book, preferably with solutions in c++. <comment><USER2> If it were me, I'd probably consult _Cracking The Coding Interview_ [1], and the Robert Sedgewick _Algorithms in C++_ [2][3] books. That and maybe spend some time practicing on Leetcode, Hacker Rank, Project Euler, etc. Skiena's _Algorithm Design Manual_ [4] could also be good.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview- Programming...](https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming- Questions/dp/0984782850)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Parts-1-4-Fundamentals- Str...](https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Parts-1-4-Fundamentals- Structure/dp/0201350882)

[3]: [https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Part-Graph-3rd- Pt-5/dp/020...](https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Part-Graph-3rd- Pt-5/dp/0201361183/)

[4]: [https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven- Skiena...](https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven- Skiena/dp/1849967202/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542224330&sr=1-3)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have a business plan? - <AUTHOR>

I know, i know, we're all supposed to be agile, iterative startuppers, building something quick, and then being flexible enough to recognize and capitalize on every opportunity that presents itself...
PG says

  "don't worry about making money. Making something people like is much harder".

 DHH says

  "Ask yourself: how can i build something that i can charge money for?".

 Neither suggests a formal business plan, as far as i can tell. I know everyone here has at least a vague idea of how they might be able to make money. But does anyone here, who hasn't launched yet, have a written business plan? <comment><USER2> The problem with a "business plan" is that some people would see such a thing as the only roadmap and follow it into oblivion instead of making the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) course corrections as business conditions and customer requirements change.

But the other extreme is to have no plan. So some sort of "Stage 1" plan is a good idea, with an ideal "Stage 2" roadmap that is open to change based upon what happens with user adoption of Stage 1. Getting to Stage 1 would need to be a good accomplishment preferably with an alpha/beta version so you can find out if you are on-track.

</comment><comment><USER3> I write notes, which I generally consider my plan. It never ends up as a full fledged, fully written plan though. But I feel like I need to cover the basics, like who I would market to, how I would make money, some general estimates on how much money the idea could make, what the costs will be, how much capital it will require, that sort of thing.

I found too many times I got excited about an idea only to later realize it was completely stupid and had no possible chance of making money. I have too many ideas in my head, so writing notes is part of the vetting process. If I can't figure out who would buy or, why and for how much, and if that will be enough in comparison to how much I would need to spend, then its not worth spending more of my time on.

I think business plans or notes need to be written, because you come up with ideas and strategies and find problems you would never have thought of. I think its even more important when you're selling an actual physical product or service, because capital is so intensive.

I think PG's advice is really for experimental entrepreneurship, where its labor intensive but not necessarily capital intensive, very much like many web 2.0 companies these days. If you're planning on building a widget that will cost $100 to make and sell for $200, you'd better be damned sure you know who might buy it, who would sell it, and when you'll start turning a profit. A good plan can be a process to tell you how those things will happen.</comment>


Show HN: Simple palette explorer using Colourlovers API - <AUTHOR> http://www.plgrnd.com/colour

<comment><USER2> i'm not sure what to do except hit "random"

<comment><AUTHOR> How bout now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea, I don't like the design. I think if the design was better I'd actually be a be to find a colorscheme I enjoyed. I'd like an easy way to select a color rather than typing hex.</comment>


Save Your Kisses For Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/11/save_your_kisses_for_me.html <comment><USER3> This is a wonderful article that gives great historical background to the middle eastern conflict and sets it in a very real context of the distrust of authority that has become so much more visible in the past ten years.

But:

This is an example of where HN's policy on titles fails. The title is a great title for the article - it's pithy, relevant and captures the sentiment of the writer exactly.

However, on a news aggregator, the title is useless. I don't believe that anyone would have expected to read a treatise on the codependent relationship between the various authorities in the Middle East when reading that title. In this case, a better title could be generated without changing too much - "Save your kisses for me - the codependency of middle eastern authority" - <USER2> would accurately prepare the reader (and probably get more interest.)

</comment><comment><USER4> A good read, but this stuck out -

 _"Liberals in the west look on baffled and horrified. What they thought was a glorious revolution in the Arab world is morphing into something they don't understand."_

Really? I'm (pretty) liberal but I watched the revolution with the knowledge that while evil was being ousted, revolutions seldom seem to end well. The developments in Egypt since then have, if anything, been comparatively mild. The Military either stepped aside or were made to step aside, without coups or mass bloodshed, and now there is an elected president that everyone is protesting over because he's given himself insane powers.

This is not a good situation, don't get me wrong, but for (almost) two years after a revolution? We're lucky we're not reading about massacres and mass graves.

<comment><USER5> At the same time, I can understand it was easy to underestimate the weight of the Brotherhood, with medias playing on the name of El Baradei and other secular figures. I agree with your point that it could have been a lot worse.

<comment><USER6> I get that our propensity for wishful thinking made it easy to underestimate the post-revolution popularity of Islamists, but their rise shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.

In Egypt at least, the Muslim Brotherhood had a number of pretty significant advantages compared to liberals and secularists. Whereas Mubarak basically crushed secularist dissent, he seemed to tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood (on a very short leash) for use as boogeymen. They were also able to organize in mosques, which were more or less untouchable, whereas nobody else had such a safe place to organize. Finally, the Mubarak regime was largely secularist, which tainted other liberals by association.

The end result was that, after the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood had a very well-organized political network ready to go, while everyone else was going, "Hmm ... time to form a political party. How do we do that?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He seems to have glossed over the Palestinian support for Nazi Germany during WWII.

And I found this section strange:

=====

By now Hamas was dominant and its military wing was ordering repeated car bombings of Israeli civilians.

...

But there was a nasty and dark side to what Sheikh Yassin and his fellow Islamists were up to in Gaza in the 1980s. They got a reputation for violently attacking anything that supported the PLO - rather than the Israelis.

=====

Apparently attacking Israeli civilians doesn't count as "nasty and dark"?

<comment><USER8> Read the article, your quote is out of context. Hamas military wing wasn't formed until 1992. Therefor attacks on civilians doesn't reflect their reputation in the 1980s, which is what those paragraphs are about.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Although many times provocative and even manipulative I always find Adam Curtis to be thought provoking.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article is brilliant. As I write this, hundreds of thousands of protestors are protesting outside Morsy's presidential palace, according to Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER10> His blog is so awesome. Mosts posts are like a mini Adam Curtis documentary / narrative. Now if the embedded BBC videos only worked on my Nexus 7...

</comment><comment><USER11> Adam Curtis is one of the most important documentary film thinkers of this or any other generation. Seminal.

'The Loving Trap' (2011) is a good place to start exploring this visionaries ground breaking work...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg>

Why is this on hacker news?

<comment><USER12> I'm also not sure why it's on hacker news, but his blog post are always wonderfully detailed and fascinating.

Perhaps this is more appropriate for hacker news though:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28TV_series%29)</comment></comment>


Death to DRM, we'll kill it in a decade, chants EFF - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/07/eff_drm/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting, for the examples given in the article, research like this is crucial from a software perspective. If this does succeed though, I can only imagine it will make cracking all forms of DRM more prominent. And there is my conundrum. Coming from the content owner world as a musician, I don't think there is anything wrong with guarding your copyrighted media content; as it is different in scope from software used in, say, medical devices that affect peoples lives. So I think what should happen instead is along the lines of a specific exemption for security research in software/hardware and not so much a blunt legalization of all DRM hacking.

But then again, whether DRM inhibits piracy or just creates access annoyances is another topic altogether. I've admired O'Reilly's no DRM model for their ebooks, but I don't think that model would work with the non-professional and not as deeply committed audience that, say, consumers of pop music in their teens would be.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hope this succeeds. If not just to make research in things like reverse engineering legal again.</comment>