The History of WD-40 - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/the-history-of-wd-40-is-stranger-than-you-think-and-no-1841585147 <comment><USER2> disclosure: I work in automotive trade craft as a diesel mechanic and I dont care to have WD40 in my shop at all for a few reasons:

0\. It is a solvent, not a lubricant. This is often lost on apprentices until they wear out a drive chain or blow up a firearm. WD40 does a terrible job of blurring that line. even the article touts it several times as a lubricant :(

1\. it absolutely CAN NOT be used around hot work, unlike most other lubricants like ND999. cans --aerosol or not-- are treated just like a can of petrol.

2\. Again, it is stunningly flammable both in and out of its aerosol form because its mostly kerosene. That means aerosol vapors floating around a powdercoat setup, an open flame, or any ignition spark, will cause it to catch fire. if your apprentice just hosed down a part with WD40 and you need to take a torch to it, youre going to have a bad time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40)

<comment><USER3> What is your preferred alternative?

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for a lubricant, silicone based ones are awesome for many tasks. The brand WD40 (which now makes several different products) even makes them.

If you spray a lock with WD-40, it will lubricate it and loosen it up immediately, but then dust will stick to it overtime and he will end up worse than where you started. Silicone doesn't do that.

<comment><USER5> PSA: "silicone" lubricants usually contain various hydrocarbons instead of silicone and are more health risky than the name would lead you to believe, see eg. [https://files.wd40.com/pdf/sds/specialist/wd-40-specialist-w...](https://files.wd40.com/pdf/sds/specialist/wd-40-specialist- water-resistant-silicone-lubricant-us-ghs.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming it contains silicone too and just doesn't have to mention it in the MSDS, but that's good to know. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Correction: article asserts that the Atlas ICBM was the first operational intercontinental missile. This is incorrect -- that honour belongs to the R-7 Semyorka, which beat it by several months and which is still in service today as the Soyuz launch vehicle.

(Yes, there's a thing called Atlas-5 that flies satellites: it's hard to see any engineering similarities between it and the original ICBM of that name; unlike the Soyuz vehicle, Which was a terrible, bad, no-good ICBM -- it took about 6 hours to fuel up and prep for launch, on pads which were 4 hours from the USSR's border as the B-52 flies -- but turned out to be a _really good_ satellite launcher.)

<comment><USER7> Atlas Centaur is still used today for ULA launches. It is the most reliable launch vehicle in existence.

<comment><USER8> Centaur is somewhat derived from the original Atlas. The Atlas V itself has very little lineage from the Atlas SM-65, other than name, though it is somewhat connected in a weird ship-of-Thesus way. (It uses the same engines as the Atlas III, which uses the same tank construction technique as the original Atlas.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest myth about WD-40 is that it is a lubricant, which is not what it is for. You are much better off lubricating with teflon or silicone based products, 3-in-1 oil, or straight mineral oil. I use WD-40 mostly on my boat for corrosion protection of moving parts.

<comment><USER10> people looove to say this, we have all heard it, but it _does_ lubricate. if you have a dry bike or motorcycle chain and only wd40 on hand use it, it works. just be sure to get a better chain lubricant quick or keep applying the wd40 every day because it doesn't stick around very long.

<comment><USER11> It is essentially heavy grease dissolved in kerosene. It makes a good cleaner for bare metal parts because unlike soap or de-greaser, it won't strip all of the existing grease off. But the thin layer of grease left behind also doesn't last long, and then you're back to bare metal.

With that disclaimer, I frequently use it as a chain lubricant for mountain bikes. You have to reapply it basically after every ride, but you're going to want to do that anyway when your chain gets covered in mud and dirt. On road bikes and motorcycles I always use a dry wax lube that lasts much longer but is difficult to clean off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Last year a co-worker asked me if I could bring in some WD-40 for him. I asked what he was going to use it for; I always try to understand the problem someone is trying to solve.

He said his chair was squeaking, so I suggested lithium grease instead. Another coworker said "Are you one of those WD-40-isn't-a-lubricant guys?" I immediately replied "Absolutely".

<comment><USER13> Someone I knew of used WD-40 on their squeaky chair in their office, which triggered the gas sensor in the fire system. Which caused a full fire alarm, evacuation, and activation of the DR site. Whoops.

Another good reason not to use it ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >The WD part of the name was descriptive for what the coating did to Water, which was Displace it, and it took the company 40 tries to get it right. I bet you can figure it out from there

Smells like marketing to me, it just doesn't need 40 attempts to come up with a simple mix of kerosene and mineral oil.

I bet the old timers used to mix their own variations long before WD-40 came on the scene.

[https://www.wired.com/2009/04/st- whatsinside-6/](https://www.wired.com/2009/04/st-whatsinside-6/)

<comment><USER15> It contains a lot of solvent (kerosene) and a smaller amount of light lubricant. One problem is that it tends to wash away heavier greases and oils that provide more persistent lubrication to things like hinges and bike chains. Then, the light lubricant is not very persistent. It can flow out of where you put it, leaving streaks, and it attracts dust.

I mostly use it to clean parts before using a proper lubricant. A much better light spray lubricant is Tri-Flow.

<comment><USER16> Same, I find it very effective for cleaning/degreasing parts without bringing real degreasers/soaps/water into the picture.

It's also really useful for spraying down bicycle/motorcycle chains after they get wet to prevent rusting. But it does require some fresh lube after things dry off.

<comment><USER15> I put some WD40 on a blue paper towel and wipe the outside of my bike chain with it, then use a bike-specific lube (Rock n Roll Gold).

<comment><USER16> Do you mean in general routine maintenance or for when it's exposed to water?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use kerosene or gasoline to unclog instead of wd40

For most general purpose use, I use white Lithium grease.

If it's metal to plastic or plastic to plastic contact surface: silicone oil/grease (mostly in 3d printed parts)

If it's metal on metal and in dirty environment: I use dry teflon lube or ceramic lube (mostly on my mountain bike and 3d printer lead screw)

If it's heavy metal on metal where it can heat significantly: MolyD grease or graphite grease

</comment><comment><USER18> WD-40 marketing is clever. Sometimes you need that brand for a product to be stocked. Regular household oil costs pennies in a can, the margin is therefore low and a retailer isn't going to be making much money on each sale. You could put a brand on a regular household oil and try to charge more but it is not something people care about, they will go for the generic oil somewhere else.

However WD-40 with its mythical backstory and ambiguous brand name can command a premium over regular household oil. This makes it work for the retailer as it no longer sells for pennies. The shop down the road that also stocks it will also have it at the same price, it is a brand that works for the retailer. People can ask for it by name and not feel they are getting conned.

This works up the retail chain with wholesalers and international distributors able to make money from the brand.

Odd that for such a beginner's grade product it comes from the cutting edge of the space age.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great study in marketing. Not good at all as a lubricant nor anti-seize, and probably shouldn't be the most ubiquitous thing people own for those general use cases but it is. A light machine oil for cleaning and preserving tools and other metal, and a penetrating anti-seize would be more handy.

<comment><USER20> Which two would you recommend?

<comment><USER21> I use "Marvel Mystery Oil" for light machine oil duty. It is a red color oil about 5wt. Does not have problems with drying out or becoming gummy. It has a particular smell, kind of cinnamonish. I use because my grandad used it. I think he used it because it smells good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looking at the MSDS, I believe the "water displacement" chemical used is naptha, but they don't go into detail about the oil used, but it's long rumored to be kerosene... Take that as you will.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lots of people here are saying that WD-40 will clean dirt out but is not a lubricant (or is a terrible lubricant). As a not-very-practical person, here's my question:

If you have something very dirty that you want to lubricate, say a bicycle chain, is it reasonable to apply WD-40 first to get rid of the dirt and then apply a better lubricant on the now-clean chain? Or will the WD-40 stick around long enough to prevent the better lubricant sticking? If the second, what the hell am I meant to do about my dirty chain that needs lubricating?

<comment><USER24> WD40 is indeed great for cleaning things, including bike parts. And you can use it as you suggest, then apply another lubricant designed for bike chains.

However, there are other cleaners specifically designed for bike chains. It's just that WD40 is often in the workshop or toolbox so it tends to get used for this sort of task.

<comment><USER25> If I remember my mechanic's advice correctly, you have to be careful what solvents you use. You might dilute/prevent lubricants from actually staying inside the chain links with WD40. Put differently: the solvent you use should be paired with the lubricant to ensure you get the best effect from both. Almost universally, the recommendation was not to use WD40 because it's just not good.

I may be talking "old wives tales" here though so I'd like an actual mechanic to correct me please.

<comment><USER24> Another my mechanics fan ;) Was literally just watching his latest video. Happy not to use WD40 if that's his advice.

I know oiling bearings which have grease in them is a no-no for just the reason you describe - will loosen the grease and so ultimately damage the bearing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is an Australian version of WD-40 called 'start ya bastard'.

[https://www.nulon.com.au/products/aerosols/start-ya- bastard-...](https://www.nulon.com.au/products/aerosols/start-ya-bastard- instant-engine-starter)

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone know where I can get a good oil can - the old kind with a long neck and you press the bottom with your thumb to squeeze out a drop of oil?

<comment><USER28> Something like this? [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004YK76](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004YK76)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just watched this Everyday Astronaut video about stainless steel vs. composites, which mentions WD-40's use in aerospace. It's an entertaining, informational video. [https://youtu.be/LogE40_wR9k?t=305](https://youtu.be/LogE40_wR9k?t=305) (jumps directly to the WD-40 reference)

</comment><comment><USER29> For a lot of purposes where you might reach for WD 40 red and tacky seemingly works well in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER30> IIRC the main ingredient is kerosene.

<comment><USER31> I guess I could read the article, but I remember it as fish oil.

<comment><USER32> You might be thinking of Rustoleum?

<comment><USER33> Or Clamato? But that was clam oil.

[https://foxpeakoutdoorsupply- com.3dcartstores.com/Hawbakers-...](https://foxpeakoutdoorsupply- com.3dcartstores.com/Hawbakers-1-oz-Concentrated-Clam-Oil-_p_29.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting to read:

        This is what the Rocket Chemical Company figured out how to make:
        a coating for Atlas missiles that prevented rust and corrosion.

since WD-40 is popular among gun enthusiasts (if not others) specifically as a cheap alternative to using other oils for rust prevention..

<comment><USER35> I'll claim no membership among "enthusiasts", but either way, the most glorious lube for me is Ballistol. Good on nearly everything, including that mentioned. To me, since childhood, WD-40 has always had a loathsome aroma. I first discovered it, as a youth, in my pa's garage, where I'd spray it over the flame of my lighter to excessive satisfaction, and onto many things with minimal discretion. Always made me nauseous, combustion or not.

I have almost acquired an affection for the scent of Ballistol, which is marketed as having "No Carcinogens", but does quite well on the many things that are and ain't (carcinogenic). I sincerely recommend it.

<comment><USER36> Weird, WD40 is one of my favorite smells. It's the best chemical smell I can think of.

I can't speak for Ballistol, but I probably like that too.

<comment><USER33> It's the delicious bouquet of banana ester! WD-40 is Edge Body Spray for nerds.

[https://io9.gizmodo.com/debunking-the-myth-of-the-fake- banan...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/debunking-the-myth-of-the-fake-banana- flavor-1629459201)

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artificial-banana- flavor_n_31...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artificial-banana- flavor_n_3148882)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cuda-Accelerated Polygon Mesh Voxelizer - <AUTHOR> http://www.forceflow.be/2016/10/02/cuda-voxelizer-v0-1/ <comment><USER2> Nice timings :).

For a project a while back I once wrote something similar in OpenCL. Back then, I wasn't calm enough to realize there is probably research in this area I could use, so I wrote it all in isolation :(. It was much slower but had the aim of being able to reduce an arbitrary (but preferrably closed) highly detailed polygonal mesh to a limited set of convex polyhedra[1]. This would happen automatically (no user interaction or setup required) and reliably. The resulting convex polyhedra sets were being used to perform occlusion culling before rendering. Fond memories :)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool! How robust is this to holes and to non-manifold geometry in the input mesh?

<comment><AUTHOR> The TriMesh input library takes care of that. Also, it's thin shell voxelization, so holes don't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Usage of the routine as a per-frame voxelization step for real-time > applications is viable.

Curious what the motivation for this could be? Assuming "voxelization" is converting a mesh representation to voxels... but GPUs need triangles. Unless it involves some interesting voxel-based effects, (sounds fun) I can't see the motivation for converting from triangles to voxels and back again on every frame?

<comment><USER5> Some lighting computations are easier to do in a voxel representation of a scene, e.g. realtime global illumination (see: [http://leifnode.com/2015/05/voxel-cone-traced-global- illumin...](http://leifnode.com/2015/05/voxel-cone-traced-global- illumination/))</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best practices for supporting remote employees? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I'm the lead programmer working for a small startup (20 employees now) that's beginning to staff up on customer support.
Our support folks have a great deal of power, most of which is accessed through a web app that we've created. We also have an extremely liberal work from home policy.
We've protected this application with IP whitelisting -- only IP addresses on the list can get to the admin site. Plus, each administrator has their own login with username/password authentication.
Maintaining the IP whitelist has become annoying as the number of employees has increased, so I've started to look at other options. It's also got me thinking about best practices with regards to remote workers. We don't have any kind of policy written down. So far we've just been playing it by ear.
So, on to my questions:
- What are the security issues that I should be thinking about with regards to remote employees?
- Would a VPN be a good replacement for IP whitelisting? (I'm a bit worried IT overhead of supporting that. And we don't have a separate IT support team or anything, just a small team of four programmers.)
- Do you have new employees fill out some kind of telecommute agreement, or agree to a telecommute policy? What's in that agreement/policy?
I'd also be interested in any of your experiences with telecommute policies in general, especially with regards to customer support teams. <comment><USER2> With regards to IP listing - you could make all of your remote guys logging in through openVPN - you can issue each one of them a certifficate and assign static IP to that certifficate and then do whitelisting basing on those static IP addresses. That adds additional layer of security so your powerfull app is not exposed to wider audience (even with whitelisting enabled, these days IP can easily change its owner). Also app is exposed only for duration of OpenVPN link being active - so when your support guy is on holiday and his certifficate to OpenVPN is kept on encrypted container he would not even initiate OpenVPN connection.

I do OpenVPN since beginning of the project and it's fafirly light when it comes to maintenance. Granted - people using it will get a bit of OpenVPN basics, also it may be challanging to have it working from Windows/OSX/Linux (I have users working from all three) - but doable and certainly it's worth time spent on deployment.

All of my team is working remotely (in different country) and there are a few risks here. First of all - all work-related materials should be kept on encrypted container with fairly strong password - in such case if their laptop was stolen this would not result in your intellectual property leak. OpenVPN adds another layer of security when it comes to access your internal resources (i.e. you can easily revoke certain certifficates once your employee is no longer with you and by doing that you would cut all online resources with one move).

I have not been pushing through strict telecommute policies. All I was asking in our agreements was that all company-related data is kept on separate encrypted container (including any keys used to authenticate to our services) with fairly strong password and that no work-related information can be released in any form without my written permission.</comment>


On Online Harms and Folk Devils: Careful Now - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vicbaines/on-online-harms-and-folk-devils-careful-now-f8b63ee25584 <comment><USER2> I really suggest the reading of it</comment>


Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext <comment><USER2> I'm paying nearly 20k (parents+child) on insurance I don't have time to use (and luckily no serious need) and once my son went to see his pediatrician and our 'private' insurance company (that i'm not going to name) sent us bill of $500, for a check-up. We disputed the charge with the insurance and they agreed to wave the payment next month. Next month comes and guess what? The same letter comes in mail. We disputed it again and again the month after when the bill was sent to us the third time. This is been happening for 6 months and don't take it seriously anymore, I don't have time to waste. I realize that a lot of money goes to waste on a system that is not working even if you're paying a lot. It is utterly broken. Downright revolting. And on top of it I get a better deal if I use no insurance at all for prescriptions. Then what am I paying for? Emergencies? I am paying nearly 20k a year for possible emergencies? It's become so complicated that nothing can be reasoned about it, this is a monster that has to be killed with fire then drowned in deep waters.

<comment><USER3> This is where I think political leaders (Democrat or Republican) could do really well. It's not just making sure people are covered. It's the existential dread of dealing with opaque, unpredictable, and incomprehensible bureaucracy that can make life-and-death decisions or drop financially crippling bills in your lap, _even if you have good insurance_. The American health care system isn't just bad for the poor. It's bad for everyone. We just can't deal with it, because we are exposed directly to unnecessary complexity.

But the fact that the people with money and good insurance are suffering from the system as well as the poor seems to be lost on Democrats, and the Republicans are just paralyzed by the whole idea of fixing health care. It's a massive political failure for both parties.

<comment><USER4> "isn't just bad for the poor. It's bad for everyone"

Thank you for saying that. I am amazed at how so many people don't see and understand this. It is not just about Cost which is insane alright. It is about the BS we have to go through after a visit to a doctor or hospital. I am scared about the type of bills and claim fights I have to do if I visit a doc. Not because I cannot afford it necessarily. But because I have to spend may be like 5 hours calling doctor's offices, insurance admins, billing departments and what not.

<comment><USER3> I went through a billing/process dispute with a provider last year after a change in their process led to a 30x increase in out-of-pocket costs for necessary treatment. It ended with them flatly lying to me that the changes were for my "safety". When I first dealt with all the new process, I asked my doctor why they were doing it, and he said "I think they just want to charge more money".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the study, nearly all the computed savings comes from two sources.

1\. Decrease in pharmaceutical costs as a result of better bargaining power.

2\. Decrease in administrative overhead, calculated by extrapolating the overhead in medicare to the entire US healthcare economy.

I don't have an informed opinion on either of these estimates, but my intuition is that #1 seems reasonable while #2 seems unlikely. The justifications they give include lower executive salaries and decreased fraud. From what I have been told by healthcare professionals, medicare has less incentive to negotiate cost, less incentive to investigate fraud, and therefore lower administrative cost.

<comment><USER6> I worked in the EMR software industry and have certifications that involve hospital & lab billing, among others. I've been on site with healthcare providers, and there are entire buildings full of people whose job it is just to code and scrub claims, and cover disputes/negotiations with private insurance providers.

Consumers do not see it because it's typically off-site from the main hospital care facilities, but believe me, the administrative savings potential is real.

<comment><USER7> I once worked at a US biotech startup getting paid by insurers where we would build ML models just to reverse-engineer the inconsistencies of CPT coding & claim reimbursement by insurers & hospitals so we could get paid. Basically trying to automate "learn that Karen at insurer X processing claims wiht code Y from hospital Z usually decides to reimburse $XX". This whole idea of "free market is more efficient for healthcare" has to die. All the incentives are backwards. For example: insurers don't want efficient claim processing because that means less revenues for them.

<comment><USER8> > * This whole idea of "free market is more efficient for healthcare" has to > die*

The current US healthcare system has very little to do with "free markets"!

<comment><USER9> _" The current US healthcare system has very little to do with 'free markets'!"_

Sure, the US health care system is certainly not governed by wide open competition, transparent pricing or similar things. But it certainly _has something to do_ with the "free markets".

The system is basically "what you get when you realize you have to insure and regulate but you never, ever do it in a centralized rational way, 'cause that would be socialism - plus you never, ever separate an 'entrepreneur' from a real or potential stream profits". Which indeed, builds the worst of all possible systems, sending risks to the consumer and profits to the investor/rent-seekers.

And from here, we could go forward to actual socialized, state-run medicine as functions adequately in most industrialized economies or back to a "wild west" system, where costs are lower, treatment is often OK and the heroin runs in large rivers as due the fatal scams(as was the US' 19th century health care reality).

<comment><USER10> Medicine changed so much after ~1880 (or maybe ~1900) that there's little to learn from the prior era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The _net_ savings would be $450B, but the total cost would still be in the 10s of trillions of dollars (Edit: 30-50 over 10 years), bigger than all of our federal spending combined. It's one thing to have as an objective, and another as a plan for getting there. The proposal they cite would make federal healthcare expenditures 69%(!!!) of the GDP (Edit: total federal expenditures). It's simply not realistic to convert our entire economy into a government and healthcare first system within only 4 years.

These calculations also ignore any affects of changed consumer preferences if you eliminate copays and deductibles, something no other universal healthcare system has done.

This is one of those calculations that is entirely accurate, but also entirely misleading.

<comment><USER12> The "10s of trillions of dollars" estimates you see are for 10 years of projected spending, not for one year.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. Good correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That also doesn't factor in the indirect benefits to the economy, like all the people who can't start a new business (etc.), being stuck in jobs they don't want because if they left they'd lose their benefits.

<comment><USER6> Or the boon from not having one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world.

<comment><USER14> The US also has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world.

[https://www.propublica.org/article/lost-mothers-maternal- hea...](https://www.propublica.org/article/lost-mothers-maternal-health-died- childbirth-pregnancy)

<comment><USER15> Yeah that's because a lot of US obgyns don't follow standard checklist protocols. They don't even study it properly. I think the UK has the best one and I know California uses it. Is it a question of treating the birth as a medical event or as something else? I've read about doctors who have given birth at a hospital and died and the death was preventable.

Other possible factors could be a lack of prenatal care or (and this is separate) births outside of a hospital / medical setting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Employer contributions to health insurance currently average $10446 per > employee and cover 71% of a household's premium. These employer premiums are > equivalent to a 12.29% tax on payroll exceeding the first $2 million... > Therefore, any payroll tax less than 12.29%, our upper bound in the SHIFT > interface, would result in savings for employers.

This excerpt makes it glaringly obvious that no economists were consulted when writing this paper. Checking the list of authors confirms this. While they may be experts in public health, they're making one of the most elementary errors in Econ 101. That is they're assuming that a private expenditure (employer provided healthcare insurance) can be transformed into a public tax with no loss of efficiency.

Deadweight loss[1] is the very first consideration in tax policy analysis. The reason it exists is very simple. Private actors have an incentive to minimize taxes in a way they do not with private expenditures. If you cut your company's health insurance plan, your employees will be unhappy and you'll either lose workers or have to raise compensation in other forms. If you restructure your company to avoid payroll taxes, your employees still enjoy the same access to single-payer healthcare.

Many M4A advocates try to hand-wave away this problem. It's the equivalent of declaring "Then a miracle occurs". In this case the authors assume that the current employer-paid premiums are equivalent to replacing with a uniform payroll tax matching this aggregate. While 12.29% is the _average_ across the entire economy, there's still wide variance between employers. Approximately half of employers are currently paying less than this. A significant proportion are paying substantially less than this.

If the current system was replaced with a uniform payroll tax, the cost of labor for employers falling into this category will rise. In response that means those employers will lower their demand for labor, which results in either both economy-wide reductions in employment, wages and ultimately investment and GDP. Those results will mean that not only will the hypothetical new payroll tax not raise the revenue the authors are projecting, but current pre-existing taxes, like income and capital gains, will also see revenue shortfalls relative to baseline.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Tax)

<comment><USER17> Why won't the rising cost of labor for the employers that currently pay less be offset by the falling cost of labor for the employers that currently pay more?

<comment><USER16> To a certain extent that would have an effect. However there are strong asymmetries between the two countervailing forces.

First labor isn't perfectly fungible between sectors and firms. Moving workers will result in significant productivity lowering frictions. The clearest example of this is that the group most likely to have low insurance outlays relative to wages are high income workers. When the denominator's larger, the fraction's smaller

For example a worker making $500,000 a year, even with a platinum plan $25,000 a year plan is only outlaying the equivalent of a 5% payroll tax. They'd get hit very hard under single-player payroll tax. In contrast a worker making $25,000 with a $6000 employer-insurance is paying 20%. Unfortunately the typical $500k/year high skilled job can't easily be replaced with twenty $25k/year workers.

Second, you have to consider not just the reshuffling of demand between employers. You all also have to consider the tradeoffs potential workers make between paid labor and leisure. Universal single-payer will cause some workers to drop out of the labor force, scale back their hours worked, or take less stressful but lower productivity jobs. When everyone has access to the same healthcare regardless, the incentives between those options becomes less differentiated. People retiring early or spending more time as homemakers could be a good thing or a bad thing. But without a doubt it lowers economic output, and therefore the tax base.

Finally raising payroll taxes creates incentives for workers to reclassify in a way that shields their income. One form is outright evasion. More jobs will pay cash under the table, more "employee leasing" schemes, or just simply not declaring income. The higher taxes are the more incentive there is to take the risk. But there's also many perfectly legal ways to dodge payroll taxes. Cash compensation can be shifted to exempt benefits like life insurance, employee discounts, and meals. Employee compensation can be reclassified as director fees. American Workers can relocated to foreign offices, where they're exempt from payroll taxes. Self-employed people can re-incorporate as an S-corp.

This just scratches the surface. Once you double the effective payroll tax, expect a lot more effort and money invested in strategies to evade it. This not only means the proposed payroll tax rate captures less revenue than projected. It also means the pre-existing payroll tax now collects less revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pretty disingenuous study.

If you move to a Medicare for All policy it would shift employer health care costs to the government. Which they would never be able to financially support especially with the challenges of an ageing population and excessive debt. And so when they say it saves $450b it's not taxpayers. It's mostly employers.

There is a reason that countries that started with M4A e.g. Australia, UK have all transitioned to a public-private mix because it's simply not sustainable otherwise.

<comment><USER19> That's why the Medicare for all will still be funded, in part, through a business tax. The difference being you've removed the for-profit middlemen, so the healthcare costs are less for businesses than the privatized hybrid version we have now.

<comment><USER20> The important issue with Warren's "plan" is that it's essentially a $8,000 per year per employee head tax, so it's a regressive tax. An afterthought in the expense of hiring a very highly-paid employee, but a not-insignificant expense of hiring a lower-paid employee.

Not to mention that her plan exempts contractors and business under 50 employees, so it incentivizes businesses to to lean on contract labor or reorganize themselves into smaller sub-companies - a small paperwork expense in the scheme of things.

The business tax should be universal to stamp out avoidance and scaled to all payroll spend so it's at least not regressive, even if it's not a progressive tax.

<comment><USER18> The problem with a new business tax is that it doesn't come for free.

Increasing businesses taxes reduces international competitiveness which can reduce taxation collected in other areas. Also politically it's an incredibly hard thing to implement.

And remember you have to do this at the same time as you're implementing Medicare for All. Making it a pretty radical transition by any measure.

<comment><USER20> Oh I agree it's a radical change from what we have now (Although the resulting system is one many countries have already succeeded with). I was merely pointing out how if the program - and the tax to support it - is not truly universal, you have created incentives for businesses to weasel out of it.

The exemptions are billed as being "pro-small-business" but that's a BS talking point. Universal medicare for all would take away all that healthcare- plan-administration overhead that small businesses already have to deal with and pay for. Plus the extraneous benefits of having employees and customers who aren't pressured to avoid basic health care and preventative care and then go bankrupt when they need a larger procedure.

But I think only a radical change can have any real effect. You have to get the denying-care-for-profit insurance bloodsuckers out of the system completely; any concessions to them should be viewed with extreme suspicion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a complete scam run by insurance companies who operate with ostensibly a government mandate (although with seemingly zero oversight). I work for myself and and have historically been paying about 20k per year in premiums for my family with a family deductible which I've never gotten remotely close to hitting. I have an hsa which I use to pay for out of pocket expenses pre tax and there is a tax deduction for health care premiums. This year I decided to test the system.. and didn't purchase health care for myself. It turns out that many of the services and drugs we all pay through the nose for are so much cheaper If you 'self pay'. I spoke to admins at both my doctor and the affiliated hospital and they all have programs to help alleiviate payment hardship if you don't have insurance (translation: you'll just have to pay the actual cost of the procedure. Not the bullshit one that the insurance company tells you that you saved a bunch on by overpaying for their insurance). Ridiculous. Inevitably someone will figure out that it's the insurance companies ripping everyone off and do something that removes their intermediation state-sponsored fleece-job. Ultimately you're actually paying for catastrophic insurance, oh and Medicaid and long term elderly Medicare, but the rip off of your standard, healthy consumer is a travesty. Maybe someone should be reviewing the actuarial models (or whatever they are) to determine an apporopiate cost for someone who's 'heathy'. Me? I'll just continue to pay like I'm poor... and save some cash.

<comment><USER4> I wish i could upvote you 1000 times. Why is it so hard for many people to understand all of this ?

<comment><USER22> Because it takes advantage of risk. OP's gamble pays off if he never has an emergency, but if he ever pays more than 20k on doctors visits he's fucked.

Granted, that doesn't often happen. But it's a risk that most people can't afford.

<comment><USER23> > but if he ever pays more than 20k on doctors visits he's fucked.

I agree with the general point that there's more risk, but it doesn't logically follow that if you pay more than 20k in a given year you are ruined, compared to if you'd taken the insurance policy. Suppose you were paying 20k / year minimum for "insurance", needed some healthcare, and ended up paying 25k = 20k for the cost of the "insurance" and another 5k out of pocket that wasn't covered. Does that mean you're ruined even if you do take insurance?

To make a better argument we'd need to understand how much wealth & income & expenses someone has, and if they're able to set aside spare cash (perhaps in an investment account) that's saved in the good years by not paying for insurance, that can be used to cover or partially cover expenses in the years where healthcare expenses are high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am sure, on paper, it is a brilliant plan. Unfortunately, reality and human behavior almost never follow the plan.

Is waste, fraud, and abuse taken into account at all in this study? What about the inevitable changes to consumers' motivation, behavior, and decision making around healthcare? It will change drastically as the cost of their care is even further removed from them than it is now.

People who have a proclivity to go to the doctor too much will go even more when its 'free'. Younger people who eschew doctors because it interferes with their current lifestyle will feel even safer continuing bad health habits because free care will be there for them later in life.

Why should I subsidize other people's bad decision making?

EDIT: All healthcare is really too broad of category for government funding. Obvious things like cosmetic surgery and others are already excluded from consideration because they are not necessary. But IMO even when medical care is necessary I don't think it always falls into the category of something society should pay for. How many ER visits, ambulance rides, and surgeries a year can be attributed to purposeful recklessness by an individual? If someone decides it is a good idea to stand on a motorcycle's seat on the freeway and then crashes, why should the public pay for that? On the other hand people who have medical issues that are no fault of their own do deserve care.

<comment><USER14> Did you read it? Also, are you familiar with any modern nations where a single-payer healthcare system has been tried? Perhaps we could use them to predict the effects.

> Is waste, fraud, and abuse taken into account at all in this study?

From the paper: "In addition to savings on overheads, a comprehensive database of health-care charges would facilitate detection of fraud, which extracts $85·7 billion every year. Following the transition to a single-payer system in Taiwan, an 8% reduction in overall national expenditure was attributed to the reduction in fraud. By moving from a fragmented health-care payment system to a unified system, irregularities in provider claims can be more easily detected. For example, under the fragmented system excessive claims for physician time can be spread across patients with several different insurance providers. However, acknowledging that improvements have been made in fraud detection since Taiwan's transition, we conservatively assume that the improved fraud detection would garner savings amounting to half that observed in Taiwan, corresponding to 4% of total health-care expenditure."

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(19\)33019-3/fulltext#seccestitle50)

> People who have a proclivity to go to the doctor too much will go even more > when its 'free'. Younger people who eschew doctors because it interferes > with their current lifestyle will feel even safer continuing bad health > habits because free care will be there for them later in life.

Is this a significant problem in countries with single-payer systems?

> Why should I subsidize other people's bad decision making?

You already are? That's how health insurance works. What this study is showing is that you'll have to subsidize other people less, because the whole system will be less expensive.

<comment><USER24> > You already are? That's how health insurance works.

I am not a defender of the insurance system. It blows. But single-payer is not the only other choice.

I want a freer healthcare market where prices are known before consuming services. Real market competition could actually occur to bring down prices. For drugs, research and development for less profitable cases could be a very worthy target of government funding. I don't have all the answers but neither does single-payer.

<comment><USER14> Healthcare is not and cannot ever be a free market. You cannot have price transparency when a buyer may be unconscious at the time of "purchase". You cannot have price competition when buyers are frequently forced to immediately purchase a good or service if they don't want to die. Hospitals are chosen by proximity, not price. These are the consequences of being mortal human beings. If we were all immortal, and "healthcare" was nothing more than voluntary cosmetic surgery, a free market might make sense.

<comment><USER24> > You cannot have price competition when buyers are frequently forced to > immediately purchase a good or service if they don't want to die.

The number of instances where this dire case occurs is minimal compared to every other instance. Sure, when its life and death its not practical. Perhaps those sorts of situations is where single payer or insurance makes sense.

For humdrum things like physicals, wellness visits, cold and flu checks, vaccinations, routine labs and imaging, etc. a free market could work very well.

<comment><USER14> Hospital care is the largest spending category by far: [https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and- Systems/Sta...](https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and- Systems/Statistics-Trends-and- Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf)

While the other things you list are technically not immediate life-or-death decisions, they still are not voluntary purchases. The presence of any kind of coercion distorts a free market.

Also, I don't want to live in a society where individuals must decide between vaccinating their newborn children or paying their electricity bill that month. Or between getting a flu shot and buying groceries for the week. The externalities of these "individual" decisions are obvious, and a free market has no answer.

Finally, let's imagine a system where emergency care is covered by a national single payer, but "humdrum things" are available in a free market. Now the poor can't afford basic physicals and flu shots, so we all end up paying more into the single payer system to cover such people being hospitalized for conditions that could have been prevented by regular medical checkups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know why the idea of a "public option" fell out of favor with Democrats. It's a good stop along the way, and doesn't risk completely destroying an industry overnight...and therefore has a much higher chance of passing. Eventually employers would push people onto the public option plan, but it wouldn't be overnight. Bernie's plan, imo has so much room for error, it's not even worth considering without a stop along the way. It's also ironic he wants to ban private insurance completely (I assume that even means supplemental) when pretty much every single country he cites as a model doesn't do that.

<comment><USER26> the end result of the public option is employer-based plans offloading their least valuable (and most vulnerable) customers onto the public option, leading to much higher costs for everyone. the abolition of private insurance is necessary for the efficiency and bargaining power of a maximalist medicare- for-all system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is this Bernie's plan? I know there are subtle but important differences between all the different varieties of "universal healthcare" that exist in the world.

The Twitter account @BadEconTakes enumerated something about this in a recent post: [https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1228143455399858176/...](https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1228143455399858176/photo/1)

Excuse their obvious bias against it; I wonder what the difference in expected savings (money + lives) might be between all these different variations on the same theme.

<comment><USER28> The fundamental challenge of any universal health care system is that to cut our spending on health care to the level of other western industrialized countries will take $1 Trillion of annual revenue out of the existing system. There's going to be a lot of disruption and people who need new jobs when that revenue goes to other things in our economy.

<comment><USER29> Real question, not snarky:

Why is this sort of downsizing always wrong for white-collar workers when blue-collar workers have been dealing with it for decades?

<comment><USER30> There's a huge difference between downsizing caused by economic forces of the private sector and downsizing caused by outright elimination of an industry by elected officials.

<comment><USER31> Healthcare (as some other sectors) is full of inefficiencies and removing or, at least, reducing them cannot be seriously labeled as "elimination of an industry". I don't see how job market restructuring in healthcare industry due to proposed transition to the single payer model is different in its essence from potential significant job market restructuring across various industry sectors due to automation trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As Churchill said...

"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing. After they have tried everything else."

<comment> grayed-down Would the right thing be single-payer or what would have to replace it once the economy and the medical profession have been destroyed?

<comment><USER33> Alarmist nonsense.

<comment> grayed-down We'll see. I've got enough money to survive single-payer, do you?

<comment><USER4> I am rich enough but running out of money every year to pay for Insurance Companies profits. So yea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The study's methodology is awful as described here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/f4uk13/a_critiq...](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/f4uk13/a_critique_of_the_lancets_medicare_for_all_study)

Not sure how it even got published

</comment><comment><USER35> > "Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all > Americans"

From many anecdotes I've read about medicine in socialized countries, it's unwise to assume that having insurance is the same as access. Many procedures are made unavailable due to being considered cost effective by The Single Payer, and the wait time for specialists can often be long.

Further, what counts as "costs" in US health industry is kind of funny - health care providers have a book-price that is often inflated, so that insurance companies can claim to their customers (mostly employers) what a good job they do in reducing costs.

For the opposite perspective, some of these points are discussed in much more detail in these two recent EconTalk episodes:

* [https://www.econtalk.org/marty-makary-on-the-price-we-pay/](https://www.econtalk.org/marty-makary-on-the-price-we-pay/)

* [https://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-c...](https://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-care/)

<comment><USER36> >Many procedures are made unavailable due to being considered cost effective by The Single Payer

whether the insurance is coming from a single payer or a private company, access to health care does not mean unrestricted access to any medical procedure you want. Private insurers also deny treatments that aren't considered to be cost effective.

<comment><USER29> That's what I've never understood about the arguments against single payer:

>You can't pick your own doctor

I already can't. If they're in network, I'm good, but if they're out of network - like my doctor was - then I have to find a new one.

>You can't pick your treatments

My spouse was denied medication by an insurance company because it was too new. So.

>You don't get to have all the healthcare you want

I already have to have pre-approval for anything up to and including emergency surgery according to my annual medical contract. So that's out the window, too.

And I have good insurance through a respectable company who may or may not have a name that rhymes with smue-smoss smue-smield.

Not sure what other arguments there are.

<comment><USER37> I know it's an edge case, but there was that kid in the UK with an easily fixable, but fatal, heart condition. Their health association refused to pay for it because no doctors in the UK knew how to perform the surgery, and they weren't willing to pay for them fly to the USA where there were specialists who could do the surgery. After they started a GoFundMe to pay for the surgery themselves, and there was a lot of press about it, the government finally agreed to pay for it instead of letting the kid die. I've also read a lot of stories from people in Canada and the UK saying that it's almost impossible to get same day medical care, even from a general practicioner. Like, they'll have to call as soon as they open, and hope they aren't already booked for the day.

<comment><USER36> >there was that kid in the UK with an easily fixable, but fatal, heart condition

i'm curious what story you're referring to. The two that were in the news recently were Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans, but neither of those were heart conditions and neither were easily fixable. They were denied access to treatments that most medical experts agreed would not be effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People seem to think that if you move to single payer that the single payer would behave like any of the existing payers, i.e. you call to fight for approval for everything you do, argue about fees for each item, denying things is routine, blah blah blah.

If you have a single payer system, it doesn't have to work that way. Not even close!

<comment><USER38> No, you wouldn't have to fight for everything.

With a single payer, there would be a list - this is what we pay for, this is what we don't pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Currently that money is flowing from the pockets of everyone into the pockets of investors, legislators and workers tied to the healthcare industry. What is the correct amount of profit? Who is to say the healthcare industry was making enough before they started hiking prices? Perhaps they saved their industry? Other countries have cheaper healthcare costs, but maybe they have less healthcare? Sure other countries might be living longer but perhaps that is tied to diet/lifestyle. Maybe Americans are living less because they are working harder, are being destroyed by a bountiful food industry that they can't resist, maybe the healthcare industry is picking up the slack... The solution offered here is a state-controlled market, which didn't work well for the Soviet Union so is it good now, or is this just our last desperate attempt to pick the lesser of two evils? But then is that the solution for out of control internet charges? For out of control property prices?

The single issue we should be focusing on in America, across healthcare, tech, government contracts, is _fair_ markets, not _free_ markets. _Free_ markets are the flag which incumbent industry rallies behind because they can rig the system when there are no rules. Similar to the Glass-Steagall Act which enabled a fairer market for average investors competing against financial institutions, the hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies need to be broken up, so that we can restore a _fair_ market for healthcare. Politically it is our best strategy for an improved service. Since it will raise industry allies, those with solutions that are being unfairly crushed by an uncompetitive industry. Remember we are living in the Citizens United era, corporations have very strong political power. Universal Healthcare is going to cause the healthcare industry to stop infighting, they will circle their wagons, and collude with better effect by engineering supply shortages, confusing legislators using bribery and misinformation, and doubling down on pricing loopholes...

<comment><USER40> Is profit the problem here? Not a horde of unnecessary make-work jobs and overpaid workers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The worst thing for me is if you go, for example, to the emergency room, the hospital charges you something like $200 and you think that is the end of it, but about a month later, other bills start coming in: $300 for xray, $350 for doctor X, etc... health insurance in the US sucks.

<comment><USER42> ER visit as a foreigner in Switzerland. Saw a dr. Saw a neurologist. Had a full bank of blood tests. Had an MRI of my head and neck. In and out in five hours. I was billed $400.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The problem has never been about what system works, that's always been clear.

The problem has been, and will continue to be about all the people that are currently employed by the dysfunctional system. Managing that situation is the meat of the challenge.

<comment><USER44> It was never a problem when companies started outsourcing to developing countries in droves...

<comment><USER43> "Hey if you join me in this scheme to make more profit by squeezing other people out of what they have today, I'll give you a cut of that profit. What do you say? I promise you'll keep getting a cut until it makes sense to squeeze you out as well."

Less obvious, and more eloquent, of course.

Better choices, better opportunities, and real innovative solutions to solve real problems. Those are the rising tides that will raise our boats instead of sinking them.

I concede though that it's easier when we're talking about 10 people and a startup, rather than 330 million human beings across 3.8 million square miles.

I want to see more leaders focus on the real crux of the problem, taking into account human nature while we're at it. I'm not holding my breath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The biggest problem I have with health insurance is that it's nearly impossible for either the insurance or a provider to tell me how much something other than a routine visit will cost me until after services have already been rendered. Forget the high costs, I can't even make an informed decision half the time unless I just go by the uninsured rates.

</comment><comment><USER46> The fact that it would save money may be part of the problem. The massive and very redundant health insurance bureaucracy employs a lot of people.

In the realm of government contracting and large scale policy decisions like this, efficiency is often politically inconvenient since it means jobs may be lost.

</comment><comment><USER47> What I don't get is how do 37 million Americans not have health insurance when the ACA was suppose to fix that issue? All of the plans are adjusted based on your income level and you get a tax credit if you are low income. If you are very poor then you get free healthcare....

<comment><USER48> If you have a reasonably middle-class income, the plans are prohibitively expensive and unbelievably shitty.

I'm only anecdotal, but by comparison, prior the ACA, my insurance for a family of 3 was $300/month with a $2500/year deductible. That $300/$5000 plan was considered predatory and high deductible.

The first plan offered to me under the ACA was something like $700/month with an $8000 deductible. Plans this year were ~$950/month with a ~$15,000 deductible. It's Cadillac pricing and one-star benefits.

Meanwhile, my "non-compliant, high deductible" plan from a private market is $400/month with a $5000/deductible.

I opted out of ACA - it made sense to opt out even when I had to pay the $2100/year penalty, because the premiums and the deductible were still less. I qualify as "underinsured", but that couldn't be farther from the truth. My plan can be irritating to use, but they have online self-service tools for providing healthcare, and I have never been questioned about paying for necessary treatments. I pay them, they pay the doc. Very simple.

For people who relied on private insurance and weren't destitute, the ACA has been a shit-show from day one.

The only highlight to the ACA for me is the hundreds of thousands in billables I've accrued helping institutions become "compliant" with the ACA.

<comment><USER47> Interesting I didn't know it had those issues

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Universal Care = Medicare + Medicaid + ObamaCare + Employment sponsonered care ???

My opinion is that we should first optimize the existing system to lower the medical cost first. Health insurance is just prepaid medical costs.

If the cost is lowered, no system would work.

<comment><USER50> No, this is talking about single payer healthcare which would mean the current insurance industry would be out the door. No Obamacare, just one government agency paying for healthcare.

Employment sponsored healthcare will likely still exist in some form, perhaps to ensure speedier access to some care.

<comment><USER51> Probably no employer sponsored healthcare for the most part. That money would go towards the Medicare coverage. There might be some supplemental plans for people who want to skip lines but most people will just use Medicare.

<comment><USER49> Is that what Canada has right now?

For US, the real problem is still health cost is too high. The market regulation seems doe not work, at least for this decade.

<comment><USER42> From what I see about half the cost is the admin overhead and another huge chunk is providers billing very high rates because they end up paying a lot less to the insurance companies. If you want to optimize the lowest fruit is the admin overhead, which means just go single payer.

<comment><USER49> For admin overhead, my understanding is that each insurance firm has its own standard and processing protocols, which brings a huge burden to providers.

The simple solution is having a simple and shared standard enforced by law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> What I wish is that everyone would be given a choice. Either opt completely out of all government regulations/taxes/programs related to healthcare or opt into a universal healthcare program. Think that you'd better off without government involvement in your healthcare? Put your body/wallet where your mouth is. Think you'd better off with a universal healthcare system, put your body/wallet where your mouth is.

But no, we'll just keep the crappy status quo which nobody thinks is a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER53> Why don't they just move the Minimum age for Medicare down from 65 gradually, and see what happens... change the speed of lowering the age depending on how the market responds And How the public likes it.

</comment><comment><USER54> I dislike how often I see justifications for the sources of inadequacies of current systems supposedly shown by comparing different countries to the US.

An example of this in the paper is when they state that the US has more expensive healthcare, but yet worse metrics such as life expectancy. As the differences in healthcare systems between the US and these other comparison countries are obvious, they want to clearly imply causation here. But, when comparing one country to another country, you are changing so many variables at once that it doesn't allow you to conclude the source or causality of these differences. They may still be partially right, but it is nowhere near proven.

While the US does have more expensive health care, it also has higher real incomes, which seem to correlate strongly with this (see the first two images on [https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional- wisdom-o...](https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-on- health-care-is-wrong-a-primer/)). While the US does have a worse life expectancy than many 'comparable' countries, it also has significantly worse problems of obesity and drug overdoses, which when controlled for eliminate a large amount of the discrepancy.

Some parts of the paper are definitely reasonable and generally agreed-upon, but it's quite clear they had a specific goal and political call-to-action set in their minds when writing it.

<comment><USER55> > has significantly worse problems of obesity and drug overdoses

Which can easily be caused by a destructive and broken healthcare system leaving the ill unable to seek treatment and thus left to fend for themselves.

Even for those with insurance the costs - in time, in bureaucracy, in often money when your insurance provider refuses to cover - are unreasonable to consider seeing a doctor in a thousandfold situations that Europeans never even second guess. Because they don't need a waist deep paper trail to go to their physician, because they won't get a dozen different bill collectors harassing them in every legally gray way possible, because they don't need to break out the checkbook on the way out to pay the minimum barrier to entry extortion at the end.

<comment><USER54> The reason I disagree with this is because our healthcare system is largely built upon treating someone after they have an apparent issue, instead of preventing the issue.

It seems very difficult for a healthcare system to stop someone from becoming obese to begin with, or stop someone from abusing drugs that is intent on it and not seeing anyone intentionally, or stop problems like depression by their root cause instead of attempting to fix all of these things afterwards.

I'd be surprised if you really think a healthcare system by itself could be powerful enough to stop obesity.

<comment><USER56> Actually it happens. You go to the doctor with some side effect, like headaches or high blood pressure and they nudge you to go to the dietist. Of course you can refuse, but there are a lot of kind and caring professionals and you know it won't cost you money, so it works sometimes.

<comment><USER54> Right, but the keyword there is 'nudge'.

If you are already having headaches and high blood pressure due to your diet, your diet should have been modified long ago. Similarly when people have cardiovascular issues and atherosclerosis, the time to change things was likely decades ago, not after they've already damaged their body so much. Sometimes these 'nudges' help patients, but getting someone to significantly alter their life is very hard.

<comment><USER56> Still there are much less obesity over here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The answer is simple, vote for a candidate that campaigns on universal healthcare. That candidate may not be the politically purest one.

<comment><USER58> Isn't every Democrat supportive of universal healthcare? (Which at the minimum is just ACA + technical fixes on it)

There are differences through whether it should be single-payer or not.

<comment><USER4> ACA is not universal healthcare. It only made things worse overall except the fact that people cannot get denied due to pre-existing conditions. Obama should have pushed for a public option with ACA at the time. In 2020, fuck that. We want to go straight to Universal healthcare, single payer. No middle ground. Only 1 democrat supports that so I am voting for him.

<comment><USER58> Why is ACA not universal? (Ignoring technical problems it had that prevented that from actually happening). It guaranteed affordability, coverage, and prevented you from opting out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> > Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans > would save more than 68 000 lives and 1·73 million life-years every year > compared with the status quo.

That this has been allowed to go on in a land of plenty is an utter disgrace that I can only hope will not go down well in the pages of history.

</comment><comment><USER60> Fundamentally, it is disgusting we are forced by government to buy insurance products (e.g., car, health) provided by for-profit companies; however, I do not support universal healthcare either. The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the electorate vote themselves benefits.

The long-term financial incentives to maintain a functioning society are all broken because of the misaligned short-term (vote for me, get free stuff) and long-term incentives (debt reduction, financial management, business planning and other investments.) Voters are simply looting the treasury at this point. It is a shame. I cannot believe anyone actually buys into the notion that government will fix problems, or somehow do a better job than what already exists.

The candidates are just handing you money from your own pockets, and skimming off the top.

It's so damn dumb.

<comment><USER61> > The government has zero ability to control its expenditure, because the > electorate vote themselves benefits.

Could you give me some examples of this? Living in a nation with universal healthcare, I've never seen this.

<comment><USER60> What else would you call students voting for loan forgiveness? Point blank the candidate is effectively saying, "we will give you $xx,xxx" in the form of loan forgiveness. It is the same for healthcare. This is a literal voting for benefits; and, this creates perverse incentives for the electorate to vote for whomever will "pay them" the most for their vote. Candidates are simply buying votes by offering free stuff with taxpayer monies. It is completely broken at this point with one candidate trying to out-give the next.

<comment><USER62> Except that here in Europe (Germany and Austria) in each election, saving money on social programs by cutting cost overhead as well as services is a big topic and parties arguing for those cuts regularly get around half of the votes.

The one candidate tries to buy votes by offering free stuff pairs by taxpayer money, the other one tries to buy votes by promising to stop giving out free and lowering taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Well there you have it, I guess. Thinking in the small, I wonder how it would have affected that Rabies shot treatment I had to get that ended up costing me $25,000 and the fucking thing wasn't even infected.

</comment><comment><USER38> _The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has the capacity to negotiate prices that align with the therapeutic value of pharmaceutical drugs and could be a potential model for the federal single-payer health-care system. This bargaining power results in pharmaceutical prices that are 40% lower in the VA system than those under Medicare_

This is a terrible proxy.

The VA doesn't really _negotiate_ , the discounts are mandatory to do business with the VA, which is an incredibly small slice of the entire US healthcare system.

When they do negotiate, it's because they promise to exclude other drugs. As a result, there are many drugs you can't get at the VA.

<comment><USER64> And, if the VA is an example of single-payer, then we're doomed. The VA is awful. That's the single best argument against single-payer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I appreciate that they took the time and expense to create a proper study looking at the numbers.

</comment><comment><USER66> If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it's "free".

</comment><comment><USER67> Single payer creates an unnecessary monopoly. One of the best health care systems (Switzerland) is both private and not single payer - but purchase is compulsory.

Obamacare and especially Trumpcare simply can not work when people delay purchasing insurance until it's too late. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Furthermore, insurance plans should not be tied to employment/employers. It's a bad incentive structure.

</comment><comment><USER68> Can anyone post the article? The site doesn't load without cookies enabled

</comment><comment><USER69> It's hard not to appreciate the cost savings, saved lives, and benefits employees and employers would see from universal healthcare.

Has anyone seen any studies on the potential impact it would have on insurance and medical administration industries? i.e. lost revenue, jobs, etc.?

<comment><USER70> > Has anyone seen any studies on the potential impact it would have on > insurance and medical administration industries? i.e. lost revenue, jobs, > etc.?

I wonder about this in the same way I wonder about a world where we have professional window breakers, and what effects it would have on the window repair industry if we stopped having people go around breaking windows.

<comment><USER71> Unfortunately, they can protest, lobby, and, shall we say, make unfortunate voting choices even after being unemployed, so it might be wise to rethink that opinion. Any changes that are made need to be gradual enough to allow them to transition to other careers or political instability will follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I just want an explanation of how this would work out better for the general population of the US than Indian Health Service has worked out for the tribes? I just don't trust any of these studies when the refuse or are ignorant of what the government is currently doing and how problematic the governments approach is.

</comment><comment> grayed-down My neighbor, a colorectal surgeon and very into what he does, has remarked on several occasions that if single payer ever happens, he and most of the other surgeons he knows will likely walk away from the profession very shortly thereafter. There would be no financial or professional motivation to continue practicing.

<comment><USER13> Because all the doctors in countries that have single payer are so horribly done by...?

<comment><USER38> 20-30% decrease in reimbursement will tick doctors off big time.</comment></comment></comment>


Obese politicians signal corruption, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://eurasianet.org/obese-politicians-signal-corruption-study-finds <comment><USER2> In Lithuania we often call them 'beavers'\- a standard picture of a man in his mid 50s, fat as hell and equally corrupt. At least we are having fewer and fewer of these. However,these occasionally get replaced by the other type- the 'slick ones'. Men in their mid 30s early 40s, outspoken, well looking and equally full of shit.

<comment><USER3> In other words, body weight is irrelevant:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm calling bullshit on this one. Is this not just basically profiling?

Some of the methods here sound especially troubling and while we all can enjoy a laugh at the expense of Soviet-wannabe dictators, how is this any different than saying some blanket physical attribute is correlated to some negative behavior or crime, etc?

I'm sure there are skinny leaders who are equally as corrupt. Maybe the skinny ones are even more corrupt and are just more able to afford personal trainers?

</comment><comment><USER6> More accurate title: Obese post-Soviet politicians correlate with corruption.

<comment><USER7> have you seen Jerold Nadler?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> N = 299. Not sure how meaningful those results are.

<comment><USER9> N is 15, not 299.

This is comparing one measure for each of the 15 countries against three other measures (cabinet minister's average obesity Vs. Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and Index of Public Integrity).

The 299 is the combined number of cabinet ministers whose weight were averaged, which is a single measure per location, not the actual subject of the statistical question (which is a country, not an individual cabinet minister).

It also isn't in a peer reviewed journal at all.

<comment><USER10> N = 15 is a lot larger than you think when the highest possible N is ~200.

<comment><USER9> If the available sample is too small, some questions may not be answerable via statistical means, at least with any high degree of confidence.

This one may not be answerable via this methodology. Even if you did all 200 countries, there just may not be enough high quality data to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

I'm not even saying the conclusion is wrong, I am saying the data doesn't exist to determine if it is right OR wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Such an interesting header and such a disappointing content! I grew up in Latvia and, trust me, the levels of corruption in Latvia are astonishing and are only limited by a relatively small budget. Yet, people are generally quite slim, and the biggest politicians are mostly sleek, tall and quite good looking.

This study needs a LOT more insight. It basically says that there is correlation with the exception of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and sometimes Ukraine. Well, that's basically all the Western/European post-USSR space, which is a lot, so it diminishes the entire thesis.

Also, countries like Tajikistan were affected by starvation after the WW2 a lot more than the Baltic States, which this study doesn't mention. Several years ago Ukraine were commemorating people who have been through Holodomor, which was also a period of severe starvation in Ukrainian SSR imposed by the collectivism after the WW2, and I remember seeing this guy receiving a medal for it... The guy was morbidly obese. So, in my opinion, it would be useful to look into the correlation of financial struggle in the USSR era and the modern attitude towards food and things that were not easily obtainable back in the USSR.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmmm. Wonder what's up with Pompeo??

</comment><comment><USER13> If all politicians are corrupt this would also be true.

</comment><comment> 1-6 Fat shaming?

<comment><USER14> Science is not interested in political correctness.

</comment></comment><comment> lota-putty Body keeps score...

</comment><comment><USER15> In other news:

> "'I was too fat' Boris Johnson says we must lose weight to fight > Coronavirus"

Perhaps the new svelter Boris will have the side benefit of reducing Tory expenses scandals.

<comment> DC-3 Expenses scandals are a pointless distraction. The lowest hanging fruit of corruption in the UK is the stuffing of the House of Lords.

<comment><USER15> But expenses scandals result in public perception of corruption (which is what the study's about), so logically, based on this definitely real and very sensible study, thinner PMs should lead to fewer of them!</comment></comment></comment>


Equal Access: Automated accessibility checker for web projects - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/IBMa/equal-access <comment><USER2> Automated tools are all fine and dandy and I like to use them.

A pet peeve of mine is that "red on white" is considered bad while being, in fact, perfectly legible:

> Element has insufficient color contrast of 3.99 (foreground color: #ff0000, > background color: #ffffff, font size: 9.4pt (12.6px), font weight: normal). > Expected contrast ratio of 4.5:1

I think whatever algorithm is used to determine contrast is deeply flawed for some colour combinations.

I remember reading an article here on HN about how luminance (or luminosity?) varied in a way that wasn't easily discernible by inspecting the RGB components of a colour and how there was a different (much harder) algorithm which instead ensured luminosity could be taken into account when picking colours for a site.

I'd wish accessibility tests used _that_ instead of taking the easy way out and using known-flawed RGB checks.

<comment><USER3> Could it be because it is accounting for people who are colorblind?

<comment><USER4> I'm colour blind, and red on white is totally fine for me as long as the red is dark enough. Actually, any colour on white is OK if it's dark enough.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for that. Could you confirm whether "pure red on white" is okay for you, or whether it's too light?

i.e. #ff0000 on #ffffff

<comment><USER4> Just checked and I'd prefer it just a touch darker (#dd0000), but as long as the font weight isn't too light, I think it's OK.

There are different forms of colour blindness - I have the red-green type (though can't correctly identify many colours), but I don't think it should make any difference for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks extremely useful.

Ensuring that websites are accessible is important work. I used to work at a company where the CTO personally dedicated several sprints to refactoring the display layer code to better support screen readers. From what I remember, it was a bit of a tedious process, but nonetheless one appreciated by all of their customers who had disabled staff.

Tools like this could save a lot of time and make the web more accessible.

</comment><comment><USER6> For WCAG work, I use and highly recommend WAVE [https://wave.webaim.org](https://wave.webaim.org)

<comment><USER7> WCAG's api just shows the no. of errors per type. Do you run it on your own servers and does it give more info that way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have also found [https://accessibilityinsights.io/](https://accessibilityinsights.io/) from microsoft to be usefull. It only covers the in-browser test side for web but has a nice ui.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not entirely sure if it's the same use case, but I think the de facto tool here is axe: [https://www.deque.com/axe/](https://www.deque.com/axe/)

(IIRC, it's also integrated in Webhint and Google's Lighthouse.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Automated accessibility testing for Android - both static and dynamic accessibility issues, all automated with little to no setup: [https://github.com/vontell/Bility](https://github.com/vontell/Bility) (all open source too)

<comment><USER10> Identifies color issues, keyboard, and user interaction issues, etc... by building up a state diagram dependent on a user's simulated abilities. Generates a report based on WCAG 2.0 specs.

<comment><USER10> With some help from others, it is also extendable to other platforms like Web and iOS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazing, I had a similar idea last year and I am glad a corporate actually built this [https://giuseppegurgone.com/automating-accessibility- tests-p...](https://giuseppegurgone.com/automating-accessibility-tests- puppeteer/)

</comment><comment><USER12> PSA: Global Accessibility Awareness day is tomorrow (Thursday) and will be mostly celebrated on twitter under #GAAD. Most years there are in-person events all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool. It's hard to find good tools to ensure you're staying accessible once you've made the effort to get there.

</comment><comment><USER14> You should make this as a web service imo.

<comment><USER15> There are web services to add accessibility checks to your CI processes. [https://tenon.io](https://tenon.io) is one, Deque has services. Deque makes axe-core, an open source library of accessibility checks that's used by Google's Lighthouse and Microsoft's Accessibility Insights for Web.

This code from IBM uses their own accessibility checklist, I'll be interested to see how it compares to axe-core.

[https://www.ibm.com/able/checklists.html](https://www.ibm.com/able/checklists.html)

<comment><USER16> The accessibility-checker package provides CI tools for Node and Karma. These tools started out as server-based checkers about a decade ago, but not all DOMs are serializable and you lose a lot of the CSS context that's needed to do proper evaluation. It's fine for fairly static pages, but has a lot of potential for false positives/negatives.

The tools provide checking for WCAG 2.0 AA, WCAG 2.1 AA and the IBM checklist. The IBM checklist is basically WCAG 2.1 AA, but has some more strict requirements for defining landmarks for screen reader navigation.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN:P2P delivery for the international migrant population. - <AUTHOR> https://www.flyoutapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Co-founder here. My girlfriend and I([https://ippad- itn.eu/researchers](https://ippad-itn.eu/researchers)) quit our jobs 4 months ago, and have been working on this day and night off of our savings since then.

FlyOut is born to address a problem that is driven by a "need" and this "need" is a global problem and wanted by the sheer volume that addresses the average middle class who study or work abroad and consistently miss the products from their culture back home or who are addressing their family members that are anxious to get in touch with foreign local products. More than 8 million people travel/day (www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2013-12-30-01.aspx). Apart from our technical solution, what matters to us is how many of them know our product!!. Massive market awareness is our 24/7 strategy.

</comment><comment><USER2> [Hi from Argentina!]

I understand the problem. When you are/move abroad, there are a million small items that are impossible to get or they don't have the correct variant. (In particular, the golosines of each country are slightly different. You can't get good alfajores abroad. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfajor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfajor) )

But the huge question is: How do you check that the service is not used for sending drugs?

Also, I don't understand:

> _A lot more !! Travellers get paid more in tips by the senders depending on > how comfortable the traveller makes the sender feel_

PS: Add the hhtp to your second link to make it clickable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your interest. So we are making it mandatory for the sender to put up detailed images and discription when the need is posted. Furthermore, we have integrated notification system to make the traveller aware to check items before acceptance from the sender. And there are also clear mention of caution every step of the way. "a lot more" refers to the fact that the senders and travellers can come to a negotiation on items and merge items to get to lower price and add on tips instead if the weight exceeds 2kgs.</comment></comment>


ADD5 - The mythical Mac Pro arrives tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://thefrustum.com/blog/2013/12/18/add5-the-mythical-mac-pro-arrives-tomorrow

<comment><USER2> Please check out the Nokia tablet ad, and then tell me it's not beyond horrible! I challenge you to find a single positive marketing point, just one...

And then check out Apple's ad , love'em or hate'em - it's brilliant and powerful.</comment>


Ask HN: How to advocate for an open development process? - <AUTHOR> I work for a company that has committed to open-sourcing a piece of software, and work is already under way to make an open-source release possible (IP review, code cleanup, etc.).
However, it looks like the development process is going to largely stay the same, with in-house development and periodic source code dumps to the outside world. (For legal reasons, there will always have to be some differences between the open-source release and the internal version of the software.) That would lose quite a bit of the benefit of open-source in my opinion.
I'm looking for ways to convince the less open-source-affine part of the company to change to an open-source-first development model. In particular, I'd be curious if there are published post-mortems and experience reports (writeups, conference talks, etc.) that would support the argument, but other ideas are welcome, too. <comment><USER2> One argument that may appeal to management is that your open source codebase becomes a powerful recruiting tool.

Many companies open source non-core code, like UI components designed for their domain or server widgets that can be pulled out into a standalone library. It's unlikely that your company will want to deal with the overhead of many outside contributors, unless it's an open source business model which it seems like it isn't. However, a couple of contributors here or there, or even better, someone who forks the codebase but doesn't cause extra work for you by submitting PRs, is a very strong signal that they'd make a good hire. They're interested, know some of the code already, like what you're working on, etc.

Since hiring is very expensive (costs 10k - 50k to make a single hire), this has real business value and you can use it to sway management.

<comment><USER2> Also, maybe they don't want to dive right in. Can you take the lead on the open source project for a small component and run that the way you want to for 3 months to show them how it could work? Maybe let each team naturally adopt the open source style if they want to, until a critical mass is hit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Making a business case that shows the bottom line is likely to be a compelling advocacy method.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's the purpose of open-sourcing this specific piece of software?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question, actually. There's customer demand for having it open- source, and there seems to be a vague sense among management that open is good.

I think that most of the people involved don't see it as a chance to get outside contributions, and that's part of the issue. Thing is, I'd like us to avoid that becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><USER4> The answer to that question might help to frame your suggestions. E.g. creating a community around your project can help lessen support load – but also make paid support offerings less attractive. If open-sourcing is seen as a source of unnecessary work, attracting contributions can provide a gain to counteract that "waste". etc pp.</comment></comment></comment>


Data Structures in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.benoitvallon.com/category/data-structures-in-javascript/ <comment><USER2> It looks like this is a teaching exercise more than anything, but it should be noted that the implementations are not great. For instance, the set uses an array based implementation instead of hash based.

In JavaScript the hash based implementation is pretty trivial to write and some quick testing in node shows that it is dramatically faster.

<comment><USER3> Unless by "hash based" you mean just using `new Set()`, I'm not aware of a way to do this generically. Using a `{}` for this would only work for a set of strings and things that can be uniquely coerced into strings. Otherwise, looping over arrays is your only option.

Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER4> > Using a `{}` for this would only work for a set of strings and things that > can be uniquely coerced into strings.

The code they use has the same limitation. It adds / removes / ensures the uniqueness of elements in the set by using Array.indexOf(...), which only works for strings and things that can be uniquely coerced into strings.

So, given this limitation, using an Object-based set would be vastly more performant.

<comment><USER5>
      var set = []
      var foo = {foot: 1}
      var bar = {bart: 2}
      set.push(foo)
      set.indexOf(foo) //0
      set.indexOf(bar) //-1

"indexOf() compares searchElement to elements of the Array using strict equality (the same method used by the ===, or triple-equals, operator)."[0]

MDN has the link to the ES5 specification, but the key part is 9(c)(ii):

"Let same be the result of applying the Strict Equality Comparison Algorithm to searchElement and elementK."

[0] - [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/indexOf)

<comment><USER4> Hmm, and yet:

       var elem = {foo:"bar"}
       var set = [elem]
       set.indexOf(elem) // 0
       set.indexOf({foo:"bar"}) // -1

So I guess the strict equality comparison is using some kind of internal objectId rather than the property name and values of the objects? I guess depend on how you want to define "uniqueness" for your set...

<comment><USER5> Objects in JavaScript use referential equality when checking for strict equality, which indexOf uses. In your code, 'elem' and '{foo:"bar"}' are different objects which is why your code doesn't work as expected.

So

      var x = {foo:"bar"}
      var y = {foo:"bar"}
      var z = x
      x === y //false
      x === z //true

This is specified in the ES3 document[0] at 11.9.6(13):

"13\. Return true if x and y refer to the same object or if they refer to objects joined to each other (see 13.1.2). Otherwise, return false."

[0] - [http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA- ST...](http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST- ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like cheating to do a Hash Table using JavaScript objects, since it's basically giving you all the hashing magic for free. It'd be cool if the example actually used an array and a hash function -- even a black box one -- to show how collisions and lookups are handled. (When I've implemented Hash Tables in JavaScript in the past, I've also included functionality to rehash the entire table into a larger array as it gets more than 25-50% full... but can't remember off the top of my head what's the mathematically optimal point to rehash.)

<comment><USER7> > When I've implemented Hash Tables in JavaScript in the past, I've also > included functionality to rehash the entire table into a larger array as it > gets more than 25-50% full... but can't remember off the top of my head > what's the mathematically optimal point to rehash.

The load factor (entries/bucket before you resize) varies greatly depending on the hashmap's addressing and collision resolution. Robin-hood hashing allows ridiculously high open-addressing load factors for instance (above 0.9 on an open-addressing linear-probed map, an open-addressing hash table can't go beyond 1), meanwhile separate-chaining allows load factors way above 1 (buckets are sequences and conflicting entries are appended to the sequence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been toying around with the idea in my head of building a small OS kernel in Javascript. I'd use grub to boot into it, ductape [0] to start an os.js or something, and then just implement everything from there.

These data-structure implementations make me feel that, even though it is crazy, it might just work. This seems to have come out very clean and easy to implement.

[0] - [http://duktape.org/](http://duktape.org/)

<comment><USER9> But why?

<comment><USER8> It would be simple to get anyone into OS development. The only easier language I can find to teach someone is Python, and that doesn't have such an easily portable runtime.

JavaScript is great because you can learn it in the afternoon and master it in a few years and has a nice subset of lisp-like features.

It would be a toy to prototype in. Easy to use, and easy to modify. Nothing serious.

<comment><USER10> Check out [https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS](https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS)

<comment><USER8> I just spent a few minutes looking around that and it seems like it has a lot of extra stuff piled on to make it easier for experienced developers, but that would inversely effect someone like me.

I looked around in there and have no idea how any of that works or how any of the modules relate.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>