How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/whitepages-alex-algard/ <comment><USER2> Hey Andrew I'm glad to see how much work you are putting into becoming a better interviewer, I haven't watched all of your interviews but from the ones I have seen, I can see you are really refining your technique and pushing the boundary between what your interviewees want to reveal and what they actually reveal.

But you gotta decide once and for all, are you going to be an asshole or not? Because I can see your frustration when you catch your interviewees in a lie or manipulation of the truth, and you let them get away with so much because you want to be nice. Go for the kill!

You don't have to be aggressive or adversarial to get at the truth -- for example, Sacha Baron Cohen and James Lipton are 2 very different kinds of interviewers, but they have both learnt how to put their interviewees in a position where truth is revealed. You do have to be willing to allow some people to hate you because you made them tell the truth, because some of them will. Otherwise all you are going to get is the same ol marketing PR spiel again and again.

<comment><USER3> _Sacha Baron Cohen...learnt how to put their interviewees in a position where truth is revealed_

Absolutely false.

<comment><USER4> Care to elaborate? From what I've seen this statement seems to be true.

<comment><USER3> Well, I'm not the one making the claim, and so I don't feel like proving a negative, but his shtick is pretty straightforward (for all the characters, with some variations):

1\. Set up a fake interview or staged encounter.

2\. Immediately confuse the interlocutor with completely unreal mannerisms/speech. People watching the movies maybe don't pick up on this because they're used to the behavior, but if Borat started talking to you, you'd immediately be thrown off center. A lot of people seem to be overly- polite and nodding because of this, and that's part of how he manipulates them. There was a guy who dressed up like Borat at the ocsars (or some award show) and Cohen was immediately in the same situation.

3\. The character then either does one of two things:

3a. Says/does something extremely impolite. Examples include bringing shit to a dinner table, stripping in front of a congressman, singing fake anti- American anthems in front of a "white trash" audience, or singing about killing Jews at a redneck bar. None of this, as far as I can see, gets at any kind of "truth". When Ron Paul called him "queer" or whatever, they tried to make him into a "hater". Well, no. I would have called him worse things, and I'm pretty sure I don't hate "queers". The "Jew killing" song was set up by an hour of standup comedy by Cohen, and everyone knew it was a joke. Again, you know who's the liar in cases like that.

3b. By asking bizarre questions at fake interviews. There _might_ be some instances where he got someone to admit something genuinely valuable, but I don't recall. It's clear he's just trying to make people look silly or trip over their tongues (Pat Buchanan talking about "Mustard gas on the BLTs") or admitting something ridiculous ("Are being racist against me because I'm black?"). I haven't seen as many of the interviews because he did that more on his British TV show, and I sure as hell don't spend my day surfing for them on youtube.

Anyway, his real purpose is to make the audience feel superior to somebody famous or somebody who represents a stereotype (whether rednecks or stuck-up UMC southerners, or Romanians, or whatever) by making those people metaphorically drop their pants in one way or another. Disagree or disagree that it's a bad thing, I don't care.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I've always thought that Baron Cohen's schtick was just a trivial and mean-spirited application of the fact that whoever edits the film has the power to make anything look like anything. But this is news to me:

 _The "Jew killing" song was set up by an hour of standup comedy by Cohen, and everyone knew it was a joke._

I can't say that's surprising, but it's interesting. "Throw The Jew Down The Well" is by far the funniest thing I've seen him do. (Actually, it might be the _only_ funny thing I've seen him do, though I guess the nude wrestling scene in Borat was funny.) I can't get upset at its ghastliness because everything else about the piece is so comedically perfect. If it was a clip from a standup show, that explains it. It's funny because it makes something horrific ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> I actually find him pretty funny, but he's a total clown. What annoys me is that people think he's...important, I guess? No, he's a clown with two victims: The one on the screen and the one in the audience who doesn't realize he's a clown.

I'm too drunk right now to research it, but in the article talking about the "jew down the well" (a title that escaped me) the wife of the bar's owner was revealed as Jewish and even she got the joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whitepages.com always seems to recruit very aggressively at career fairs at my school (U of WA). They'll be at a booth nestled in between Intel and Google pitching their hearts out. Commendable, to say the least.

However, they majorly over-played the "rockstar programmer" meme by handing out branded drumsticks and guitar picks last year. I always laugh upon noticing my pair of Whitepages.com drumsticks when unpacking my snare drum.

<comment><USER7> And, yet, you still have the drum sticks...and everyone that happens to think highly of you will let a little of that goodwill rub off on the brand that's on your sticks. That sounds like an excellent marketing expenditure, to me.

The best you can hope for from schwag is that most of what you give away doesn't get thrown away, and actually gets used for a few months, or longer. Sounds like this one worked out well. At conferences, you can always tell what the worst schwag is by looking in the trash cans on the way out of the expo hall. The stuff that gets thrown away immediately is utterly wasted; the stuff that makes it into the suitcase and gets back home with someone is the good stuff.

<comment><USER6> I'm not arguing against the efficacy of the drumsticks. They're vastly more unique and useful than the heap of lanyards, mints, and stickers that accumulate after conferences or career fairs. They're one of the few pieces of schwag that I'll probably have with me 6 months from now. So, in terms of their goal as marketing tools, they're perfect. My only issue was with the overuse of the "rockstar" title being applied to developers.

<comment><USER8> Agreed on the rockstar thing. I started to see a lot of people complain about this, so I wrote about it here: [http://thesethings.posterous.com/rapping- grandmas-and-ninja-...](http://thesethings.posterous.com/rapping-grandmas-and- ninja-rockstar-fatigue)

You're exactly right with the overuse. It didn't have to be innately bad to say "rockstar," just a couple of things have conspired to make it so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Impressive interview, very inspiring. Mixergy is an awesome site.

<comment><USER10> unless you want to read a transcript.

<comment><USER10> Apparently from all the downvotes I am the only one that hates a small iframe with a wall of text?

<comment><USER11> In case you didn't see the etherpad link:

<http://mixergy.etherpad.com/56>?

<comment><USER10> I didn't, but still, if I am going to your website and you present me with content, it should be easy to read, that etherpad site is still an tiny iframe. I don't know of any other site really using that format for long articles that is popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the more general topic of whitepages.com:

The thing that frustrates me about whitepages and similar sites is they don't allow me to build up my own phonebook. Say I want to look up the number of a restaurant - after I have done that once, I want to add it to a virtual address book, maybe even something I can sync with my mobile phone (eg. via Google contacts or something else that nuevasync supports).

Does anyone here know of a site allowing that?

I know, I know, I have asked this before... (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=754175>) - hope springs eternal, though.

</comment><comment><USER13> I liked the interview. Interesting to see how he used other peoples resources instead of creating then from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's cool to hear about Whitepages early history. For several years Whitepages was one of the last "big" all Perl shops in Seattle. Though their recent recruiting ads are for Rails developers, so perhaps they have since re- architected.

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought we convinced mixergy to both stop making crazy headlines and to remove the "VOTE FOR ME!" link on pages? :-\

<comment><USER16> I actually didn't realize I used this formula for my headlines until someone pointed it out here on HN. Now that I notice it, it saves me so much time to search for an alternative.

<comment><USER17> FWIW, the title really puts me off. Similar titles that put me off:

"How I built a startup in N hours"

"How I built a business with just $N"

where N is designed to be small to increase click through.

In society we're all looking for too many short cuts. Too many easy fixes. Fat? Nah - don't exercise and eat healthily, get a diet pill!

Also the whole rags to riches story is a really tiresome angle to take on things IMHO. I'd say that most startups are built by people without any money :/

(Having said that I do really like the interviews you do. Very interesting).

<comment><USER18> Agreed but if you listen to Mixergy the #1 message that I hear from the guests is that they put so much hard work into their businesses.

The titles get people to click the links but the interviews stand for themselves after that.

Keep up the great work Andrew!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


4 Products That Will Create the Next Google or Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/fwd-thoughts/the-4-products-that-will-create-the-next-google-or-facebook-3f5da6d01f17#.fe4fnhulz <comment><USER2> I suppose the logical extension of this thesis is what solution, analogous to weighted links for google and private facebook for Facebook, will emerge in digital personal assistants, self-driving cars, VR, and/or AR? It's the solution giving people the experience they want that gets the reliable eyeballs that allows someone to own the advertising.

I suspect that the inevitable slow progression of hardware is going to fragment AR, VR, and autonomous autos. That leaves digital personal assistants as plausible, since it's mostly software.

However, digital personal assistants are not a new problem. They're an old problem with a new name. They're just a verbal command line interface. It's extremely difficult to figure out what a user WANTS given only the minimum possible interaction. I suspect digital personal assistants are more of a data and trust problem than an interface or algorithm problem. If the users don't trust the service enough to let them have all the contextual information necessary to make a SWAG at what they're trying to do then it just won't work.</comment>


Is my data completely deleted from Facebook when I delete my account? - <AUTHOR> Does all my data get deleted, even from their backups?<p>What about data that FB apps have collected about me? Does Facebook have an obligation to require the app developers to delete any of my data collected from Facebook as well? <comment><USER2> If you have to ask...</comment>


Sudoku may save us from spam - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/11/19/2094677.htm?site=science&topic=tech

<comment><USER2> Sudoku _is_ easy to do. That aside, these challenge-response spam ideas have been floating around for years and years. Still no good implementation...</comment>


Wanted: A New Home for My Country - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/magazine/10MALDIVES-t.html

<comment><USER2> Sea levels in the Maldives appear to be stable or falling: [http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular- opinio...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and- calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/)</comment>


Kindle Fire: An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/19/kindle_fire_google_apps/

<comment><USER2> Can someone who understands this situation better why we cant have Google Apps on the Kindle Fire? I know that a manufacturer has to go through a device verification process with Google to get your device verified and only then you have access to the Android Market and other Google Apps. What prevents Amazon from doing so?</comment>


What Makes Singapore's Health Care So Cheap? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/upshot/what-makes-singapores-health-care-so-cheap.html <comment><USER2> Personal anecdote:

My Singaporean Uncle got stage IV nose-cancer two years ago. He has two kids, a stay-at-home wife and a job that pays only middle income. After a year of constant, weekly treatment by an assortment of doctors, he went into remission and paid in total less than one thousand dollars.

My Singaporean ex-girlfriend had systemic organ issues over her life, that have alternately caused her seizures and blackouts. She was hospitalized for years at a time. Again, middle income family, with three kids and a stay-at- home-wife. Her family paid virtually nothing for 15+ years of treatment, and then the government paid for her university. Full-ride. Oh and they also paid her directly to attend classes. About S$1500 per semester, last time I checked.

I have so many other great stories about my mother's country.

For now, my sentiment is that Singapore's society, government and people, on balance, cares about each other. Not a power-hungry "all glory to the nation" care, or a brainless "let's give everyone everything for free" care, but a "these people are people like you and I. If I put on their shoes, how would I like to be treated?" care.

In the United States, that basic, human empathy is in question.

<comment><USER3> > _Her family paid virtually nothing for 15+ years of treatment, and then the > government paid for her university. Full-ride. Oh and they also paid her > directly to attend classes. About S$1500 per semester, last time I checked._

Singaporean here. How does one enjoy such education benefits? I haven't heard of them.

> _My Singaporean Uncle got stage IV nose-cancer two years ago. […] After a > year of constant, weekly treatment by an assortment of doctors, he went into > remission and paid in total less than one thousand dollars._

An MRI here will cost between 700 to 1,000 dollars, even at subsidised hospitals [1]. I fail to see how a year's worth of cancer treatment would be that cheap.

We have mandatory hospitalisation and surgical insurance (MediShield Life [2]), but with the various co-payments and deductibles, a procedure would still cost anywhere between $2,000 to $4,000.

[1] [https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/pressRoom/pressR...](https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/pressRoom/pressRoomItemRelease/2005/radiology_charges_in_singapore.html)

[2] [https://www.medishieldlife.sg](https://www.medishieldlife.sg)

<comment><USER2> She went into NIE, did the two-year program, got the diploma, and then went on to do the four-year program to get the full degree.

Mind you, it isn't all sunshine and roses, since in return for the government paying for basically everything, she has to work more than a few years in the MOE public school system. Although they do get paid, you make much more money as a private tutor with credentials so people fresh from the degree program are always eager to get on out.

Regarding my Uncle, this is what he told me when I asked at the last CNY, but I can accept if he was off by a few thousand.

<comment><USER3> > _Mind you, it isn 't all sunshine and roses, since in return for the > government paying for basically everything, she has to work more than a few > years in the MOE public school system._

It should be noted that such "full-ride" scholarships are generally reserved for the top students in a cohort (scoring at least, I believe, AAB at A Level), and are not available to all citizens (as compared to EU citizens who enjoy heavily-subsidised tuition and student loans).

On the other hand, Singapore has a tuition grant available for all international students who are admitted into a public university [1], with the stipulation that they work for a Singapore company for at least three years after they graduate. (This is aimed at trying to get "smart" people to settle down in Singapore.)

Singapore's system heavily favours strong academic potential (the government's idea of "meritocracy" — which is starting to show its cracks [2]) over egalitarianism.

There are sadly no "student loan" schemes to allow for independent living.

[1] [https://tgonline.moe.gov.sg/tgis/normal/studentViewTuitionGr...](https://tgonline.moe.gov.sg/tgis/normal/studentViewTuitionGrantSubsidyInfo.action)

[2] [https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2017/09/28/dr-chee-soon- jua...](https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2017/09/28/dr-chee-soon-juan-the-pap- failing-elitist-model/)

<comment><USER4> It's a bit funny that meritocracy has such generally positive connotations today, even though the term was first used and then mercilessly satirized in _The Rise of the Meritocracy_ [1].

When different people want different things, who do we decide who is in charge? Should it be based on family and birth, like monarchy and aristocracy? Should it be based on who can seize power by force? What about ethnic and national identity? Or should we have a competitive testing system and metrics that select out an elite? Or maybe we should all vote on a person?

Or why even have a person at all who's in a charge? Maybe we should all collectively vote for every decision without any intermediaries? Or maybe we just give an equal portion of resources to every person, and let them individually decide what to do with it.

None of these systems are perfect. They all have deficiencies and can be gamed one way or another. Question is which one is the best for the particular situation.

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

<comment><USER5> Outside of certain tech and alt-right circles it certainly does not have a positive connotation

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, it also has a positive connotation in certain finance circles.

<comment><USER4> Why is it unfortunate? Because of what meritocracy attempts or purports to do (give power and status to those who deserve it, e.g. because they did a good job in the past), or because of imperfections in practice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is there never a comparison to Japan? They are 1/2 the size of the USA, have a privatized health system, and it's pretty damn awesome. They also have price controls which make things a lot easier to comprehend.

<comment><USER8> Spot on. Noah Smith made the comparison couple of months ago [0].

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-19/want-a- be...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-19/want-a-better- health-care-system-check-out-japan)

<comment><USER9> sounds like that isn't fully privatised but is rather a hybrid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Incidentally, almost half of Singapore's population are foreigners. And if you are not a citizen, you do not get proper health insurance there that covers things like pre-existing conditions. This is in stark contrast to many other nations in the world where legal residents, whether citizens or not, get the same care and treatment.

<comment><USER11> Blue card (edit: permanent resident card) holders have full coverage, and have to pay for it fully

<comment><USER10> Im not sure what Blue card means. Do you mean PR? If so that's basically citizenship. I'm talking about all the people who are there for work.

<comment><USER12> By the same token, "in stark contrast to many other nations in the world where legal residents, whether citizens or not, get the same care and treatment" above also generally does not apply to temporary workers, but does apply to permanent residents, in those other nations.

<comment><USER10> Europe grants you those rights even for a temporary work visa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A health minister who makes $1.3 million dollars a year so he is bribed directly by the people to represent their interests and not by health care lobbyists who are just looking for ways to increase costs and make more money.

<comment><USER3> I think Singapore's cabinet ministers are overpaid for the "value" they offer.

The previous health minister (who's currently the transport minister) is a joke among Singaporeans, since he took credit for managing the SARS incident that happened before his stint as health minister [1], and couldn't manage to fix rising house prices _or_ the failing public transport system in his subsequent portfolios.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaw_Boon_Wan#Minister_for_Hea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaw_Boon_Wan#Minister_for_Health)

<comment><USER14> Singaporean here. 'Failing" Public Transport System? Sure the SMRT has issues, but it is still one of the best run train systems in the world. Second only to HK MTR. Having used the BART, UK and NY Train services, the Singapore MRT system is far more cheaper and efficient. Not to mention cleaner, safer , etc. Yes, it is fashionable to criticize the PAP fatcats. But having lived in an assortment of first world and other Asian countries, Singapore is haven, albeit a "Gated Community" with a benevolent and paternalistic government. Given the chaos I seen in some of the late-stage-capitlisitic democracies, Singapore gives you safety and stability, at the expense of giving away some freedom and rights. Price that I'm willing to pay and I'm sure the majority of Singaporeans also do. And yes, I'm OK to fund and support the PAP "fatcats" as long as they deliver the goods. Their salary is peanuts compared to the waste, corruption and chaos that I see in the regional Asian countries due to corrupt kakistocracies in power. Case in point, up north from Singapore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Singapore's medical community scares me a little bit. Despite having implanted metal in my body, an orthopedic surgeon wanted to give me an MRI anyway. It's completely absurd, I got a second opinion and fortunately found a doctor who agreed that would be extremely dangerous. It's true that the first doctor did not cost that much; it's also true I got what I paid for.

<comment><USER15> Can you get metal implants which are safe for MRIs?

<comment><USER16> Anything that's not affected by magnets, I suppose. Titanium should do it.

<comment><USER17> Also it's pretty easy to detect if someone has a large piece of ferromagnetic metal inside them or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From my observation living in Singapore lifestyle is an important factor. People are generally active and there seems to be little obesity. Among young guys at least, national service and the associated mandatory fitness requirements seem to play a part in setting long term habits early.

<comment><USER19> See also: Trim and Fit. Obesity is a thing in Singapore.

<comment><USER20> Ya, isn't it really hot and humid there? That would make exercise a bit harder.

<comment><USER21> Singapore has the nickname "The Air-conditioned Nation".

More to the point, the climate hasn't changed but the percentage of obese people there, like in most countries, is increasing. You therefore can't attribute that recent increase to heat and humidity.

<comment><USER20> Ya, that makes sense. Also, if it's like southern china, people are probably pretty active outside at night when its cooler (e.g. Night square dancing, night markets, etc...).

Rising obesity rates can be related to the weather even if it hasn't changed if there is pressure on lifestyle from other areas (e.g. Work/life balance). E.g. People in the south USA are not increasingly obese even though the weather stays the same, life style pressure plus hot and humid climate combine to create the problem; climate makes the problem more difficult to fix once it appears.

<comment><USER19> From my experience, it's still hot as balls at night. The only deliberate activity I did outside in SG at any time of day was to go find air conditioning inside. Of course I'm American, not Singaporean.

<comment><USER22> I found Singaporean nights quite nice and mild. I'm German and used to much colder temperatures, but the 25 degrees Celsius at night and a mild breeze where quite bearable for leisurely strolls and even working out.

<comment><USER19> My experience was closer to 30 degrees by 9pm which when combined with that humidity was just awful. After a rain it gets pretty nice at night though.

The Singaporeans and Malaysians I know mostly tend to be heavier than Asian friends and acquaintances from other countries. Dunno if the stats bear that out or if I'm just an outlier. Likewise, I don't think that the climate is so different than other nearby countries, but the food is. Tons of fried, oily, greasy carbs. It's absolutely delicious, but you can feel your arteries slamming shut just looking at half of the things you'd get in a hawker centre.

<comment><USER22> I love hawker centre food. Especially the uber greasy char kway teow. I mostly hung out with locals, and they didn't seem to be on the chubbier side. But I didn't make formal statistical comparisons with people from elsewhere in south east asia.

Once the sun's down, I didn't mind the weather one bit. I just avoided going out during the day.

It's a great place for barefoot running, and midnight shopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They somehow failed to mention price controls, except obliquely. That's impressive.

</comment><comment><USER24> Comparison with the NHS seems a little unfair given relative population densities.

        > what makes it beloved among many
        > conservative policy analysts, is its
        > reliance on health savings accounts.
        > All workers are mandated to put a
        > decent percentage of their earnings
        > into savings for the future

If you tried this in America you'd have anti-Communism riots on the street with Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin talking about how FEMA were using the money to set up death camps before taking their guns.

<comment><USER22> > Comparison with the NHS seems a little unfair given relative population > densities.

London needs to become a city state, then. Why subsidise those hillbillies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Low corruption. Competent leadership. Efficient administration.

With these, any healthcare system will work well.

<comment><USER16> That's like saying a company will always be successful as long as it executes well. Good execution is absolutely necessary, and can compensate for mediocre strategy, but it can't fix a truly broken model.

</comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano The article touches on this:

"But when hospitals competed, they did so by... paying more for doctors..."

"Singapore heavily regulates the number of physicians, and it has some control over salaries as well."

What makes price controls for doctors wages different than failures with price controls in other industries?

<comment><USER26> > What makes price controls for doctors wages different than failures with > price controls in other industries?

It's not different conceptually, there are numerous negative consequences for the market and the doctors. It's different in terms of what's morally tolerated on the basis that healthcare is now viewed, very widely, as a right. Even in the US that's increasingly becoming the public view, which is why the Republicans (with the Presidency + both houses of Congress) couldn't get close to fully removing the ACA (eg the protections around existing conditions is overwhelmingly popular even for the majority of Republican voters).

If healthcare is a right, then the people working in healthcare are what exactly? You have a right to N healthcare, that must be provided by the labor of someone else. There are two common answers to that, based on what one believes ideologically: those workers are either economic slaves, or they're knowingly accepting a social contract of sorts by choosing to be in the field.

<comment><USER27> Price caps on most things produce shortages. Doctors on the other hand are generally not that money motivated - I doubt many would drop out of medical college because the salary was $80k rather than $120k say. Though there are limits - I know some people drop out of the UK NHS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's doable because Singapore is a small city-state, easily regulated, strongly controlled and managed. The largest hospitals are public, and the smaller ones private, i.e., the government has positioned itself to be the main healthcare provider, ergo, their strong ability to manage and control healthcare costs is all but guaranteed.

In doing so, they have blocked profiteering, collusion and exploitation by vested interests, but this can be challenging to impossible to achieve in other countries due to the obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER16> The YouTube channel Health Care Triage has a series on different countries health care systems. Super interesting how different the systems are.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not that it'd happen but it would be an interesting experiment if you could try changing to the Singapore system in some part of the US. Say Hawaii or Puerto Rico. It would be an upheaval but at ~1/3 the cost and longer life expectancy it could be worth trying. Assuming the locals were up for it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I spent 2 years of my life in Singapore as an excange student 10 years ago.

>What Makes Singapore's Health Care So Cheap?

I think they missed the most obvious reason: China

Singapore's public health system does not shy away from purchasing a lion share of pharmaceuticals, disposables, and medical equipment from China.

And about C class, the 'conveyorised' healthcare is one of biggest cost cavers when Singapore's medical specialist salary is approaching Western levels. Doctors focus on throughput. The goal is to fix the person and kick him out of hospital as fast as possible, and not to make everything possible to extend his stay as '5 star hotel hospitals' do in USA

<comment><USER29> I think no one but a few moderately rich Canadians consider US hospitals 5-star. In my experience, most US hospitals, as soon as they find out you have a little money try to do services add. The ambulance ride, nurse, specialist, radiologist, MRI, bed, CATV, telephone, and meals all add up on that bill.

And once they've exhausted your insurance or personal finances then they kick you out.

<comment><USER30> He's referring to the fact that insurance companies have shifted towards a system where "patient satisfaction" is a key driver of payment. This has caused a bit of a crisis in hospitals as executives push BS programs intended to improve these scores and they often come at the expense of actual care.

It's becoming a huge issue in US hospitals

<comment><USER31> It's not too surprising. The patient doesn't care what's being charged!

We'd see the same thing in other industries if market interference led to the customer not being price sensitive. Like higher ed.

<comment><USER30> My understanding is that it's really just one more way insurance companies try to avoid paying for hospital bills. My partner works in revenue recovery for a regional hospital and it's staggering how awful insurance companies are.

I've heard many stories where waiting for insurance authorizations would have literally cost people their lives, but the insurance has grounds to refuse payment without it, so the hospital ends up eating the entire cost of the person's care.

The system is so incredibly fucked up. Far beyond what most people think.

That being said, maternity wards are apparently the college campus of the hospital world, which is why you see so many of them being built in rich areas. They are insanely profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >>But when hospitals competed, they did so by buying new technology, offering expensive services, paying more for doctors, decreasing services to lower- class wards, and focusing more on A-class wards. This led to increased spending.

>>In other words, Singapore discovered that, as we've seen many times before, the market sometimes fails in health care.

Why is increased spending on buying new technology deemed a failure? Maybe the optimal healthcare spending level is far higher than what's spent now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Having worked in both Singapore and US, I find the key difference in healthcare and other societal issues is the ideology. US: left or right, liberal or conservative. Singapore: whatever works. After all Singapore is one of the few living city states and less than 60 years old. Running a 200+ year old huge nation state means complexity and challenges on an exponentially different scale.

</comment><comment><USER34> The key idea I see here is that instead of dumping money into insurers, you have your own government mandated "health savings account".

People would be far less likely to overuse health services if they felt they were paying personally.

That's a powerful idea.

<comment><USER35> Is there any good data on health service overuse?

<comment><USER34> My understanding is that overuse is one of the primary reasons health spending is so high in most countries.

No data to back it up, might be wrong.

I can tell you I absolutely loathe pouring money into health insurers to prop up an overused and wasteful system. I'd much rather something like this personal account idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Before I dive in, I want to say "size matters". Singapore is the size of a city in US, whatever works for them does not apply to US as a whole.

<comment><USER36> No,my point is that as a small country especially like Singapore, it is easier/more-flexible to optimize healthcare etc comparing to US, it is not as diversified as US population and thus much simpler to manage/plan/organize/control etc. While it definitely is a good example, many scheme there might not work at a large scale.

<comment><USER16> Politically, I guess it does. Half of the US would rebell if you tried to simply transplant the Singapore health care system to the US. The US is also more attractive for lobbyists because of its size.

But economically it's obviously nonsense.

<comment><USER37> There are economic reasons why size matters. For example, Singapore is small enough that you can get to any hospital from anywhere. In many areas of the US, there are fewer accessible healthcare providers. (For example, less dense regions, or urban areas in which all the competing hospitals have merged.) Perhaps this doesn't matter if you want to set broad price controls or nationalize the entire industry. But under Obamacare, it has made insurers' lives more difficult.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happens to a developer's stuff when he dies? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, just a general question I was wondering about. Since most of us here have side projects, apps that make money, accounts with money/subscriptions/payments, money owed, etc.
What do you think would happen to all your stuff if you were to die tomorrow? Some of us aren't married, don't have families or wills. You may or may not have a technically inclined family who would think to check your paypal accounts, or would know what to do with your money making assets. They probably wouldn't know how to access/backup and move your domains and server files either.
Its probably not practical to modify your will every time you start a new project. Does this concern you? Have you told others about your accounts and what to do with your projects should you disappear? Thanks <comment><USER2> This is similar to the question "what would happen to your facebook account when you die" for the general public, and a possible answer is, similarly - there's no value for others to access them anyway, unless you are some kind of celebrity or your side projects are making millions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not necessarily, there are people with mobile and web apps who are making nice sums of money, maybe hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. Some are extremely low maintenance and don't need to be updated at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's a great argument for releasing all of your work as open source. At least that way it has a chance to survive.

People making more than a few thousand/year with their web applications have probably thought of a continuity plan, but everything below that will most likely be lost.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the iPhone 3G S hardware improvements? - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone?mco=MTE2OTU Besides being 3 grams heavier, I am not sure what hardware improvements have been made to the 3G S to give it faster user experience.  Does anyone have more information on this? <comment><USER2> 256mb ram and a 600 MHz processor. Also, improved battery. Old one had 128mb ram and 412MHz processor.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also a 3-axis magnetometer.</comment>


My Experience at JuliaCon - <AUTHOR> http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2014/06/30/my-experience-at-juliacon/

<comment><USER2> Would the video, slides (and corresponding source repos) be uploaded sometime ? Would love to see those.

Reading between the lines, devectorize.jl and the vectorization framework will make for a heady mix. I am glad that Julia is challenging the traditional mantra of "vectorize (as in the R/Numpy/Matlab sense) the loops". It is heart warming to see that the language designers get it that this style has inherent speed limitations (time is spent filling and copying temporary vectors).

If any Julia core developer is seeing this, just a shout out, (i) to say you are doing awesome work, and (ii) @ macros available in the standard library are not documented well. It would be good to have a page that describes what is available now.

EDIT: Just clarifying my point. Macros as a feature are quite well described in the docs. What I miss is an index of macros that come built in with the standard library. They would help both with pedagogy and with putting them to actual use, for example removing bounds checks. If they are a little more discoverable than they are now that would be very helpful to a newcomer. For a new'ish language the documentation is otherwise quite admirable. @ViralBShah I filed an issue.

<comment><USER3> I had to look up Devectorize.jl: [https://github.com/lindahua/Devectorize.jl](https://github.com/lindahua/Devectorize.jl)

The point, I think, is not that vectorizing is slow. It's that you don't want to be myopic when you do it. Your point about time spent filling and copying vectors is independent of what Devectorize is trying to do.

Yes, when you vectorize code, you need to have a prologue and an epilogue which gets the data in the correct format for the SIMD operations. This prologue and epilogue has a cost, and if it's larger than the gain from the SIMD operations, then it's not worth vectorizing. (This can happen if, say, you only have 4 elements to vectorize.) However, we have to do this cost- analysis _all the time_. Figuring out when it's beneficial to vectorize code has been around as long as we've vectorized code.

Devectorize.jl is not about that problem. Rather, it's about when you have a chain of expressions, and the operators in those expressions have implied loops. The naive thing to do is to myopically execute each one of those loops, creating and passing around temporary vectors. The Devectorize framework is given an entire expression, and is able to analyze where the implied loops are, and figures out how to express that computation in a single loop.

We can tell these two concepts are independent because the ideal situation is to first use Devectorize on an expression, and then vectorize the result!

For the record, the approach taken by Devectorize.jl is similar to the problem that expression templates ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_templates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_templates)) in C++ try to solve. Through template trickery and operator overloading, we can put off evaluating an expression, avoiding the temporaries and unnecessary memory traversal that a naive execution implies. The Boost library uBLAS (micro Base Linear Algebra Subprograms, [http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/libs/numeric/ublas/doc/...](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/libs/numeric/ublas/doc/index.htm)) uses this technique.

<comment><USER4> I think you are getting at this above and what I've written below is somewhat redundant with srean's followup, but to clarify, _writing_ vectorized code is mostly orthogonal to using SIMD vector instructions to compute the result. A sufficiently smart compiler can turn a loop into SIMD instructions, and these days most compilers (including LLVM, which Julia uses) are pretty good at that.

The problem that Julia solves here is that many scientific programming environments _require_ you to write vectorized code, because they are interpreted and so looping through the elements in a vector incurs massive interpreter overhead. In some cases, this can make your code much more difficult to understand than if you wrote an explicit loop, but even when it does not, it often forces you to give up performance that could be obtained if you could write the code in a devectorized manner.

For example, consider the problem of calculating the variance of a sample. To calculate the variance in MATLAB, one might write:

      mu = mean(x)
      sum((x - mu).^2) / (length(x) - 1)

Although I don't know the details of how MATLAB optimizes this code, I do know that it has roughly equivalent performance characteristics to Julia code that first computes x - mu, then computes abs2(x - mu), then sums along the result. With an interpreter, you can't do much better, and this is actually how the MATLAB var function does it. In Julia, we compute the variance as:

      mu = mean(x)
      v = 0.
      for i = 1:length(x)
          v += abs2(x[i] - mu)
      end
      v / (length(x) - 1)

This is several times faster than MATLAB's included var function, because the computations performed on each element are cheap relative to the cost of memory access. If you wrap the loop in the @simd macro and add @inbounds to eliminate the bounds check when accessing x, the LLVM loop vectorizer will actually take that loop and translate it into SIMD instructions, making it even faster. (The @simd macro is necessary to tell LLVM that it's okay to vectorize, since accumulating into n variables and summing them at the end gives different [but usually more accurate] results compared to accumulating into a single variable due to floating point rounding.)

The promise of Devectorize.jl is that you will be able to write the first code fragment and have it transformed to the second, which would be neat indeed.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for providing more detail and context. I wonder how the clash in terminology came about ! Who would have imagined naming things uniquely would be so hard (pun intended).

I understand that your example is entirely pedagogic, but just a cautionary note for the unwary (a) although it is tempting to fold the variance calculation into a single loop (accumulate the totals of x and x^2), (b) neither that obvious single loop version nor the code above are good ways to compute variance if one cares about preserving precision, more so if x has a wide dynamic range. In large scale problems it does raise its ugly head and these bugs are difficult to catch because the code is mathematically correct. Using double mitigates the problem to an extent (but then floats are faster for SIMD vectorization).

Another side note, I have gradually come to realize and appreciate the unique position that Fortran holds. It is not often that you have compiler writers with a background in numerical analysis or vice versa. I BTW have background in none and sorely miss that.

<comment><USER4> The way I compute the variance above is, to my knowledge, the standard algorithm implemented by most software packages (apparently including MATLAB). (The single pass computation you mention is subject to catastrophic cancellation, and thus pretty terrible unless the mean of your data is very small relative to the variance.) However, the "real" implementation in Julia standard library is indeed a bit better: it performs pairwise summation, which has O(log n) error growth instead of O(n) error growth at negligible performance cost (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairwise_summation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairwise_summation)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's unfortunate the Julia community doesn't have enough resources to maintain their website.

The available version was 0.2 for ages (I see now they offer a pre-release 0.3), and the blog hasn't been updated for 9 months.

Some simple posts every month or so would signal that this is a live, worked- on, language (which it is, and interesting stuff happens all the time).

It was difficult to even find out about JuliaCon -- no banner, no blog post, nothing, just a small link in the main site navigation, that one can easily not notice.

<comment><USER6> To get a full sense of the level of activity, see here: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pulse](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pulse) (and that is only the core - there is also considerable activity in the packages)

More frequent posts on the main blog would indeed be a good idea. There will certainly be a few GSoC student posts as the summer progresses.

As of a few days ago there is a also Julia blog aggregator highlighting community posts:

[http://www.juliabloggers.com/](http://www.juliabloggers.com/)

I believe we've had 0.3-pre nightlies posted since at least January.

As far as JuliaCon, it was announced on the mailing lists and did show up on HN once I believe. It sold out very quickly, so wasn't really actively promoted after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Julia looks amazing BUT as an R user:

1) RStudio is just such an amazing tool with rmarkdown and pandoc. I run my statistics in a document and can output to html, pdf or Word. I can't tell you how important the ability to print out to Word is in my corporate setting.

2) The libraries and tools are vast (Seems like Linux tons of options but really one or two are perfect for the individual use)

3) 99% of what I do takes less then 2 seconds with R

Personally if I have a need for large datasets I will look to Julia if I can't get a solution with R and data.tables.

<comment><USER8> Personally, I don't see Julia replacing R for a while. As you note, the R community has much of what it needs already. When I initially switched from R to Julia, it was because R wasn't really usable for the kind of work I do. It's since become clear to me that I work on problems that don't come up for most R users: problems involving large sparse matrices, including large-scale optimization and MCMC. If you don't deal with those kinds of things, R is a good choice.

<comment><USER9> It seems like MCMC is a potentially killer app for Julia. Any thoughts as to how Julia's MCMC facilities compare to, say, something like Stan?

<comment><USER8> I think MCMC.jl is pretty immature compared with Stan. But there is work on a Stan wrapper. Personally, I mostly write MCMC code by hand these days.

<comment><USER9> Granted I don't have much experience with Stan, but from what little I've poked around RStan, the workflow left something to be desired. Setting up a C++ environment, and then embedding Stan code (which appears to be a C++ DSL of sorts) as strings inside your R code seems... unpleasant.

Perhaps if MCMC.jl matures, and if it can offer performance competitive with BUGS, JAGS, Stan, etc., I could see Julia's statistical fortunes rise along with Bayesian methods generally. I'm working on a PhD in a discipline that is just now beginning to dip its toes in Bayesian waters. I get the feeling that the adoption surge is yet to come.

Interesting that you're implementing your own MCMC methods mainly. As part of my coursework I did a little bit of that, but perpetually felt like I wasn't smart enough to anything sophisticated--either in terms of exotic sampling methods, or working with very complex posterior distributions. It may just be my frequentist R toolbox experience messing with me, but I know I feel more comfortable with the safety blanket of a framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know the performance of julia for optimization in contrast to say, ilog cplex, or gurobi?

<comment><USER11> It interfaces to a number of solvers, both commercial and open source. According to this page [1] it currently supports:

COIN Cbc/Clp, GNU GLPK, Gurobi, Ipopt, Mosek, NLopt

So you can use it to generate models that are solved in Gurobi if you want. Or you can use the available open source solvers.

[1] [http://www.juliaopt.org/](http://www.juliaopt.org/)</comment></comment>


What Lady Gaga and hedge fund managers have in common  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/what-lady-gaga-and-hedge-fund-managers-have-in-common/article1879307/

<comment><AUTHOR> Article with a foundation in microeconomics. Because of imperfect substitution and joint consumption technologies Lady Gaga and hedge fund managers make more money than investment bankers, who do not enjoy the benefits of joint consumption technologies (every deal is piecework).</comment>


Storage/fetching/streaming service Put.io launches - <AUTHOR> http://put.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if they gain much traction without some sort of "free" account level (say 50M or less).

Not even a video demo or trial account.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use YouTube on my iphone to queue up and listen to songs I want to hear. TO find songs I want to hear while driving I speak into Google, "Artist, Song, Youtube," to bring up the result, click & listen.

You can find some decent quality sounding versions of songs you want to hear; albeit some are crappy quality too. You can later access those songs in your YouTube iPhone app history.

This put.io sounds cool, but for me I dont download mp3s anymore and when I had a hard drive full of them I did upload them once to streamload.com but that took forever.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Putting the number of 'slots' available on the signup page is interesting. I wonder what the rationale for this is ... and it lets you infer what rate of signups they are getting (assuming it isn't just a marketing gimmick).

The fact that premium is just twice the pro limits but costs slightly more than 2x premium stands out as a little odd. Why not offer incremental storage capacity in the same way as bandwidth?

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what the legal implications of this are. Here in the NL, downloading movies/music is legal, but uploading can cause you trouble. If put.io seeds a movie torrent for you, can you get into trouble?

<comment><USER6> from their faq

Your files are your business. We do not log your location, isp or ip address.

[http://help.put.io/faqs/security-privacy/is-putio- reliable-s...](http://help.put.io/faqs/security-privacy/is-putio-reliable- secure-and-confidential)

<comment><USER5> That's not really an answer (and, btw, not really honest -- location, isp and ip don't matter if they have your email address). Just because something can't be tracked doesn't mean it's legal.

<comment><USER7> Actually, it's hard to be caught when nothing is public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Their "speedtest.bin" file downloads at 175 KB/s for me on my 2 MB/s connection, so no deal. Granted I'm in Australia, but using Rapidshare or Usenet directly I can max out my connection.

<comment><USER9> From Europe/Estonia it was roughly 5--6MiB/s. They definitely have the width, it's just the distance that matters in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty awesome.

I slapped together a private solution on slicehost that pretty much does the same thing, but this is much cheaper.

It'll be good until it gets shutdown.

<comment><USER10> PS. I wish it did Usenet though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A word of warning: their servers are in Europe, so if you happen to be far from the Netherlands, it might be slow.</comment>


Google Buys AdMob For $750 Million In Stock - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-to-acquire-mobile-ad-network-admob-for-750-million-in-stock-2009-11 <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=931306></comment>


Quantifying just how much long-distance relationships suck [personal experiment] - <AUTHOR> https://www.trackinghappiness.com/how-long-distance-relationship-influenced-happiness/ <comment><USER2> Yes, it is really really like really painful when it comes to a long distance relationship. I can speak from my own experience because we were together in the same city for almost 4.5 years of our relationship. Now, I have moved to some other location. We are totally not happy with it. It has been almost 2 month we didn't meet for the first time in last 8 years and 4.5 years of our relationship. We want to find a solution as it is affecting our happiness.</comment>


99.9 % Get VPS and Shared Hosting at Just $0.1 - <AUTHOR> https://anycreatives.blogspot.com/p/paid-hosting.html <comment><USER2> Redirecting Referral link.

<comment><AUTHOR> 99.9 % Get VPS and Shared Hosting at Just $0.1 click paid hosting and get unlimited free VPS hosting for your newie website at just $.01/M</comment></comment>


Trump: US will quit Trans-Pacific trade deal - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/21/politics/donald-trump-outlines-policy-plan-for-first-100-days/index.html <comment><USER2> Well, that's a less bad list.</comment>


Donate – iTerm2 - <AUTHOR> https://iterm2.com/donate.html <comment><USER2> I used iTerm for many years because it was so much better than Terminal.app.

At the suggestion of a coworker, I recently switched back to regular Terminal.app and it does everything I need, but with much less cpu/ram usage and 'feels' faster. This is one area where Apple has really done a good job in improving things.

As much as I love this alternative solution, I'm mot sure I'd go back to iTerm2 unless I had a specific need that Terminal didn't address.

<comment><USER3> No tabs or split screen?

<comment><USER4> As of Catalina, it can do both of those things. It may have been able to do both before, but I haven't checked in a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out Alacritty, for a much faster and lower CPU usage terminal. The difference feels like gaming at 60fps vs 24fps.

[https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty)

<comment><USER6> iTerm2 started doing some GPU rendering stuff in version 3.2 ([https://iterm2.com/downloads/stable/iTerm2-3_2_0.changelog](https://iterm2.com/downloads/stable/iTerm2-3_2_0.changelog)). Maybe it's faster since you last used it?

<comment><USER7> I just double checked and Alacritty is indeed much faster still. This issue is probably the single most important feature for me in a terminal emulator, and unfortunately iTerm2 just doesn't cut it yet.

On my 5k display, at full screen resolution, iTerm2 scrolls in a large vim buffer at max 40fps. Alacritty on the other hand is around 60fps. Not sure how to enable an FPS meter on the Terminal app, but it feels closer to 10-15fps.

I used iTerm2 for years, and am still a Patron, but until GPU acceleration gets to 60fps at 5k resolution, I don't think I'll be switching back. It's still one of my favorite open source projects, and is only one of two that I currently pay for each month. So I sincerely recommend it to anyone who doesn't care too much about terminal performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish I would want to support iTerm2. I have been using it for years. However, a few problems compound to make me hesitate staying on macOS at all. In particular:

1\. I still haven't figured out how to solve the slow performance of vim in iTerm2, despite trying the solutions in multiple posts over the internet; vim in alacritty is _also_ slow.

2\. macOS Catalina sucks (32-bit killed off, and the show-stopper mail data loss bug);

3\. The latest 16" MacBook Pro keyboard is _better_ than the butterfly design of the last few years, but still not as good as the old scissor design;

4\. I want nothing to do with the Touch Bar, except maybe Touch ID.

All in all, I'll probably get my next mobile device from any one of the following manufacturers, and install Linux:

\- Dell (XPS 15")

\- System76 (Darter Pro)

\- Microsoft Surface (Pro, Book, or Laptop line)

\- Lenovo (ThinkPad X1 Carbon or Extreme line)

\- Purism (Librem 15)

Thankfully, I never really invested a lot of money in macOS-only apps.

Maybe I'll donate to iTerm2 once, as a gesture of gratitude for the past years. But donating regularly as a patron just won't happen for me, I think.

<comment><USER9> I thought like you and got a nice, well-made laptop and put Linux on it. I tried out the different desktop environments, looked at doing pure Wayland (not ready yet...), but ultimately I went back to macOS. Using Linux is still a death by a thousand tiny cuts. The last cut for me this time around was discovering my laptop would hard-shutdown at 15% battery to "protect the hardware". No warning. No sleep. No hybrid sleep-then-hibernate. My research points to my partitioning choices (swap file instead of swap partition?) as the reason my device doesn't hibernate.

On Linux-for-desktop things like "slow performance" (of all the GUI apps) or showstopper bugs are par for the course - you have much more flexibility to route around them, but I found it much more frustrating and time consuming to try to make Ubuntu 18.04 enjoyable and productive than to just go back to Apple's stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know that there was a way to financially support iTerm2, an app I've used constantly for many years. iTerm2 is incredibly well executed and regularly updated. Turns out there are multiple ways to help, so I'm now a supporter.

<comment><USER10> That's cool but I'm not so sure pledge drives for every which bit of software really belong on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'm not so sure pledge drives for every which bit of software really belong > on HN.

That's a completely fair opinion, but in that case, don't upvote it. As [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) says, "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate."

(I think iTerm2 is used by a far larger percentage of HN readers than most other free apps, especially those maintained by one individual, but I may be wrong about that. Maybe the meta-submission is this: if you spend a lot of time using a piece of free software - and enjoy it - and don't contribute code/docs/something to it, see whether there's a way to donate. Doesn't need to be iTerm2.)

<comment><USER11> I for one would love to see HN do a quarterly/yearly FOSS project donation drive. The more we can do to encourage the development, maintenance, and improvement of tools we all use and sometimes take for granted, the better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using iTerm2 since what feels like forever, I especially value the tmux integration. I've met George Nachman once many years back when he was at Google - a truly humble and soft spoken person. Really appreciate the work he's done on iTerm2!

</comment><comment><USER13> I used it for years. Donated $20. Thank you :)

<comment><USER14> Same here. Happy to pay! Thank you, iTerm2!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Please ship peaty single-malt Scotch to:" :-D

</comment><comment><USER16> does terminal app has copy on select now? such simple feat is so convenient...

</comment><comment><USER17> Would be awesome with more PPC builds! Yes PPC still lives!

Great application.

<comment><USER18> How exactly does PPC still live, esp for macOS?

<comment><USER17> Why, enthusiasts of course!

\- [http://leopardrebirth.net/](http://leopardrebirth.net/)

\- [https://macpowerpc.com/](https://macpowerpc.com/)

\- [https://youtu.be/9SSsE1LcrUI](https://youtu.be/9SSsE1LcrUI)

Iterm1 and iterm2 had builds for PPC. They were glorious. It would be great to see more updates.</comment></comment></comment>


How to talk to your Boomer about Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nickpallen/how-to-talk-to-your-boomer-about-covid-19-ff082a6bf1c3 <comment><USER2> I find it offensive that the author assumes that people from older generations are necessarily ignorant or uninformed. The article could have been less patronizing.

</comment><comment><USER3> How to talk to your millennial about COVID-19:

I know you think this virus only kills people over the age of 60, but that is only true to the extent that we have enough ventilators for everyone.

The early studies have indicated that somewhere between 10-15% of people infected require a period of mechanical ventilation in ICU. Some of those will also require extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). In the early studies from China, patients also received a mixed anti-viral cocktail, even though there is as-yet no evidence that any particular anti-viral is effective.

The 3.5% or so case-fatality rate has been established mostly in circumstances where everyone who needed one could have a ventilator, ECMO, and antivirals.

In Ontario, for example, there are about 5000 ventilators, total. Some are surgical ventilators and some are dedicated ICU ventilators. They are not evenly distributed geographically.

If, for another example, there were 100,000 active cases simultaneously in Ontario, previous reports indicate that we would need up to 15,000 ventilators.

In Italy, all elective surgeries were cancelled so that the surgical ventilators could be used for COVID-19 patients. Anyone who could be moved out of ICU or weaned off a ventilator (not many in this category) was. But this does not mean that every ventilator could be made available for new cases.

If you truly need a ventilator, you will certainly die without it; there is no obvious alternative.

So, if Ontario at some point has 100,000 active COVID-19 cases, then 10,000 people will die. This is a case-fatality rate of 10%, rather than the three- and-a-bit percent that we have been seeing.

If Ontario has 200,000 simultaneous cases, then 25,000 will die. That's 10,000 from the first 100,000 cases and 15,000 from the second 100,000. Because we still have the same number of ventilators.

Reports from the situation in northern Italy suggest that it is not just the over-60 crowd requiring ventilators; it's just that the over-60s aren't surviving their time on mechanical ventilation as well as younger patients.

Also, you should be aware that the mutation rate for SARS-CoV-2 in a single infection chain is about two base pairs per month. Meaning that, in 100,000 cases, we are likely to see about 50,000 point mutations. In 1918, the first wave of novel H1N1 killed people at the extremes of life: the old and the very young. After the virus mutated during the summer of 1919, the virus preferentially killed the young and healthy.

So, millennials, don't be idiots. Practice social isolation. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Don't be cavalier about this and incubate the virus. Flatten the curve.

It may be boomer-remover right now, but if you fuck around here you may regret it very deeply and soon.</comment>


Is Jimmy Wales Wikipedia founder rich – money or life - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Is-Jimmy-Wales-rich?share=1 <comment><USER2> Such a bogus answer. The person asking the question literally wanted a number in $ for net worth. What he got was a crash course in philosophy and moral science

<comment><USER3> > the question literally wanted a number in $ for net worth

That is _literally_ not true. The question did not literally ask for a number in $ for net worth.

I do agree the questioner may have had dollars in mind (and probably would have settled for a ballpark) and that Wales avoided a quantitative answer. Evasive and cheeky but still with some enjoyable insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A more interesting question would be, after all he has experienced: Does Jimmy Wales really want to be rich?

</comment><comment><USER5> > Nearly half of the people on earth live on less than $2 a day. I spend more > than that on my cellphone bill.

What cell provider does he have, cause $60 a month is cheap. I'm being cute, but seriously $2 a day should not be a measuring stick of average weath. Let's go with the US average of 30k a year according to his own invention [1].

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER6> To answer your more facetious question, many prepaid plans offer unlimited call/text and a functional amount of data for less than that amount. Under ATT I get call/text/3GB of rollover data for just under 50.</comment></comment>


Copyright wars heat up: US wins extradition of college kid from England - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/copyright-wars-heat-up-us-wins-extradition-of-college-kid-from-england.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

<comment><USER2> Lots of message board legal opinions on this thread. Few if any references to the actual ruling, which is here:

[http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgment...](http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/us- v-odwyer-ruling.pdf)

Things you'd want to know before forming an opinion of what happened here:

* The guy is alleged to have made over $230,000 (a sum that the US says has been tracked), and himself admits to making 15,000GBP per month(!) from the site.

* After having his domain (TVShack.net) seized in 2010, before the extradition request, he registered "TVShack.cc" and set the site back up (with a cute "Fuck the Police" banner). It's hard to know whether he'd have been extradited if he'd have just shut the thing down.

* Criminal copyright infringement _does_ in fact exist in the UK, as does contributory infringement; the key element that establishes criminal infringement is "intent to profit", which has been clearly established. The guy made a lucrative business brokering pirated movies.

* The UK has a "common carrier" statute (there termed "mere conduit", which, more poetic, innit?) which the defendant lost claim to by (a) exercising control over who could post what videos to his site and (b) idiotically posting copy on his website about how people were "saving money" by watching movies through his site instead of at the theater.

It's easy to believe that lots of people have gotten innocently tangled up in legal nonsense because of the chaos and (perhaps) overreach in copyright enforcement. This doesn't look like one of those people.

<comment><USER3> There wouldn't be nearly as much outrage if he were merely being prosecuted in the UK, which as you demonstrate, is entirely feasible. If the UK has criminal laws banning offensive free speech (and from what I know of the UK, they probably do), and a UK citizen posts 'Fuck Muhammad' _specifically directed_ at Arabic countries, he should not be extradited to said countries to be tried for blasphemy.

<comment><USER2> First, I am happy that the US does not have laws against offensive speech.

Second: your analogy is imperfect. The defendant isn't charged with violating a UK/US law in the UK. He's charged with violating it _in the US_. Two sets of judges apparently considered the jurisdictional issue here and both concluded that the harm alleged occurred in the United States, and that O'Dwyer should therefore be tried in the United States.

<comment><USER4> The analogy is better than that. If the location a crime occurs is determined by where the browser is at, the reading "F*ck Muhamad" in an Arab country should make you subject to their laws. Even if it's only on .sa domains (if the US can claim jurisdiction over .com, certainly Saudi Arabia can claim it over .sa), that is a hugely dangerous precedent.

I would not be complaining about extradition to Sweden, since that is where their business was located, but citizens of the world should not be subject to the capricious laws of the United States, just because they went online.

As a US citizen, this disgusts me.

<comment><USER2> The "capricious law" you're referring to here is nearly identical in the UK.

Personally, the "offensive speech" argument 'mindslight brought up doesn't so much make me question extradition so much as it disquiets me about the idea of "offensive speech" laws. You can't be extradited from the US for saying "Fuck $RELIGOUS_FIGURE" because saying "Fuck $RELIGIOUS_FIGURE" simply isn't a crime here. We got that one right; the UK got it wrong.

Note that UK laws restricting speech have been fig leaves for other politically-motivated legal proceedings; people in the UK have tried (and failed) to exploit the UK's libel laws to punish US speech they disagreed with.

It is not particularly controversial in either the US or UK legislatures that running a 6 figure business on pirated first-run movies shouldn't be legal. I realize that it's controversial on message boards, but a lot of things are controversial on message boards that turn out not to be in the "big room". It was also controversial on Hacker News and Reddit that Hans Reiser was convicted on "circumstantial evidence".

<comment><USER4> For the record, when I refer to capricious laws, I'm discussing from the viewpoint of people outside the US who, even though they may be doing things legally in their country, are suddenly at the whim of the US government.

Certainly, O'Dwyer should be subject to UK laws. I have no problem with his arrest. I have a problem with his extradition, which, given he could be prosecuted at home, one can only guess is happening because the penalties are so much more severe in the US. Why take an ounce of flesh when you can get a pound...and show the world which government is _really_ in charge.

<comment><USER2> The UK signed a treaty with the US and something like 50 other countries that _requires_ them to extradite under these circumstances. Because the law broken exists both in the foreign country and domestically, and because the evidence behind the crime is clear, there isn't even a fig leaf of a justification for not extraditing; to not extradite, they would have to break their own extradition treaty.

Frankly, I think the core of this argument is that you and I disagree about the legitimacy of the underlying law. There's nothing wrong with that disagreement. You're entitled to the opinion that criminal charges for commercial violation of copyright are wrong, idiotic, &c. But what I'm commenting about has nothing to do with the actual law; I'm just saying, this doesn't appear to be a _process abuse_.

Fun fact: we had an argument about the US "bullying" the UK over extradition about a year ago, in the McKinnon case. At issue: a "controversial" renegotiation of the extradition treaty between the US and UK that lowered the evidentiary standard for extradition to the US. A few minute's Google research showed the bullying was _exactly in the opposite direction_ \--- that prior to the treaty renegotiation, the evidentiary standard for extradition to the US was extreme and far stricter than that of extradition to the UK.

Additional fun fact: O'Dwyer has superior due process protections in the US than he does in the UK.

<comment><USER5> > Additional fun fact: O'Dwyer has superior due process protections in the US > than he does in the UK.

The same protections that Manning has? They don't seem to amount to much.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but O'Dwyer can't be tried in a military court, and neither O'Dwyer nor Manning can be coerced into testifying against themselves (unlike in the UK system, which does penalize defendants for not testifying).

This is one of those arguments like "yeah well tell that to the people at Gitmo" that seems like it must have much more moral force to the person making the argument than to anyone hearing it. The US government is not systematically depriving fraud suspects of due process rights.

<comment><USER5> > The US government is not systematically depriving fraud suspects of due > process rights.

No, only in cases where someone having those rights would be a nuisance to the US government.

Manning has been tortured by your government for a long time now, purely because they wanted to make an example out of him. Is that alright?

Basically, if you don't have due process rights whenever the US government unilaterally _decides that you don't_ , then what exactly do the rights matter? _Are_ they even rights anymore?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's bullsh*t.

I agree that a person doesn't need to actually visit a country to face extradition. I agree that the US should be able to extradite people who break their laws and harm American citizens and business.

However this doesn't look like a legal action to me. It looks like a political one.

The guy never hosted the content. He simply created a resource that made content already hosted on hundreds of websites elsewhere easier to find.

Where does it stop? If my website links to a site like The Pirate Bay or whatever does that mean I am helping people infringe copyright? If a US citizen verbally asks me where they can 'aquire' photoshop and I say.. "Oh you could probably find a torrent at blah address" does this book me a one way trip to the states?

US silliness aside it is demoralising that the UK Government provides so little protection to residents. This guy didn't physically harm anyone. He didn't make a site that specifically targetted the US. He didn't host the content. He didn't visit the US or host his site there. He didn't even break a UK law...

How you can send a resident to - potentially - be incarcerated in a foreign country for commiting an act which your own legal system doesn't believe is a crime is beyond me.

<comment><USER2> Nobody is going to extradite you for putting a link on your personal website to The Pirate Bay. In fact: they can't; even if that link technically does establish contributory infringement, your liability for posting that link is civil, not criminal.

That's not what this guy did. He made 15,000GBP/mo placing ads on a site that prominently featured first-run movies and included promotional copy he himself added suggesting that the site would save you money because you didn't have to go to a theater. It's the _running a business_ on copyright infringement that gets you charged criminally.

<comment><USER7> So what is the offence he committed in the UK?

<comment><USER2> The _Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988_ , Section 107, (2A), which establishes provisions for criminal infringement.

<comment><USER7>
        107(2A) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:
        "A person who infringes copyright in a work by communicating the work in public
        (a) in the course of business, or
        (b) otherwise than in the course of business but to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright commits an offence if he knows or has reason to believe that, by doing so he is infringing copyright in that work".

What's meant by 'communicating' here then? And wouldn't the second clause---by the same standard---make linking to copyrighted material that is illegally distributed unlawful in any case? What a terribly written law.

<comment><USER2> Are you a UK lawyer? I'm not. I don't feel like I can productively argue this point with you. What I can say is that the citation of that law and the conclusion that O'Dwyer should be tried for violating it came from a UK judge; I linked to the ruling upthread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is scary. Not only for British citizens, but for all citizens of the EU, since we got the European Arrest Warrant:

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

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure why this site is being treated any differently to all the other link sharing sites out there? Is he being made an example out of?

Just seems like this is all at a great cost to both the UK and US, and yet, does very little to tackle the perceived problem. Link sharing sites continue to exist. As his site was taken down after authorities spoke to him, was any money seized? Either way, if the police feel the matter has been dealt with, I'm not sure what the US aim to achieve out of this.

Perhaps we should compile a list of US based link sharing sites and ask they focus on problems at home before extraditing others. Maybe then the laws and procedures involving such sites will be suitably developed to be able to take overseas.

<comment><USER10> Seems to me this is an attempt by the US to say to the world: "You must live by our laws now".

Terrifying.

<comment><USER11> The judge rules that equivalent laws existed in the UK, which was the basis of the extradition.

<comment><USER10> Surely if the equivalent laws did actually exist in the UK, then he should be tried in the UK.

<comment><USER12> He could have been, but the UK courts said that they had no interest in prosecuting. Seems strange that it opens up the possibility of extradition, but there you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Terrifying.

The effects of local policy making/lobbying exhibits zero friction in transitioning to the global stage.

And without precedence there is no checks/balance to ratify/amend international standards.

It's been reduced simply to tit for tat; "You forfeit the rights of your citizens and I'll give you diplomatic favors?"

"Deal"

</comment><comment><USER14> As a British citizen I'm not sure if this makes me sad or angry. I think it's both.

<comment><USER15> If I were British I would question what our nation's sovereignty actually means. It's not like this kid killed an american and fled back to the UK.

Personally, I would like to see a law that says we will never extradite someone to a country where they could face a harsher penalty than they would at home for the same crime. If nationality can't offer you at least that, what is it actually buying me?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's more of a massacre than war.. the strength of parties involved is simply not comparable (mostly due to apparently spine less UK govt)..

<comment><USER17> The situation is pretty pathetic. I'm not at all an advocate for piracy, but big media companies just have way too much control over government.

To me it just serves as a reminder to always act to reduce the power and reach of government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is a UK resident reasonably expected to understand foreign laws and judicial processes? One would hope Theresa May, as Home Secretary, is fighting to protect the British people by pulling the plug on the web.

<comment><USER2> They can't, which is why you can't easily be extradited from the UK for foreign crimes that aren't also crimes in the UK. Unfortunately for him, the crime he's charged with is also 1:1 a crime in the UK.

<comment><USER19> But if you look at the case of Christopher Tappin, who was caught in an FBI sting allegedly exporting missile batteries to Iran...

1\. The batteries were dual use 2\. He never actually did the deal, he was named as the exporter by the guy who did 3\. He thought the batteries were going to Holland.

Now there may be more to this than we know, but none of the above is a crime in the UK

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> He's 23. He's not a 'kid'.

<comment><USER21> A 'kid' is defined as "a child or young person"

23 is young. He's a young person, ergo he is a kid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The thing that bugs me is this ...

If an American had done this (or something similar enough) would the US government allow them be extradited to the EU to be tried and incarcerated if found guilty?

I think not.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think this is very telling of how fragile and insecure the institutions of the US economy and government are that they could be so threatened by nothing more than flickering lights on a computer screen.

</comment><comment><USER24> Notably, Dave is visiting Obama. Coincidence?</comment>


How To Open and Manipulate Large CSV Files On A Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.alecdibble.com/blog/large-csvs-on-mac/ <comment><USER3> The counter-intuitive part is that a 100MB file is considered large on a machine with 8-16GB RAM.

It's definitely not the problem of the resources, but only of the architecture of applications.

(Indeed, the right application is a DBMS, not a spreadsheet.)

</comment><comment><USER4> You could get interested in:

[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for linking this. It seems to be much more intuitive than awk, especially for his particular purpose. I wish I would have found this a few months ago when I was slicing and dicing lots of data for an extensive system migration project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I saw "large", I expected >10GB. And "big data" if it needs to be batch processed or distributed processed.

</comment><comment><USER6> No mention of vi or Sqlite? While I'm no vi expert it's a great tool for working with big files when you want to browse around without grep. And Sqlite is similarly ubiquitous and capable of crunching large files.

<comment><AUTHOR> vi is an editor so it doesn't really solve my requirement of getting spreadsheet-like editing capabilities. SQlite is a good idea, I never thought of that. I will investigate that and add it to the article. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> SQLite does a great job of importing CSV, and then you're able to use something like "DB Browser for SQLite"[1] to browse the data.

I use something like this to fix up column names and import:

        sed -i '' -e '1 s/ \/ /_/g; 1 s/[() ]/_/g' $csv_file
        sqlite3 $db_file <<SQL
        .mode csv
        .import $csv_file $table_name
        SQL

[1] [https://sqlitebrowser.org/](https://sqlitebrowser.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing, I will definitely try this out. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two of my favorite tools for this kind of thing:

[http://visidata.org/](http://visidata.org/)

And

[http://recs.pl/](http://recs.pl/)

</comment><comment><USER9> > Excel for Mac performed well but it is a paid solution so I did not consider > it viable for many developers

Because developers handling gigabyte size data, and wanting to reliably manipulate it in a GUI, cannot possibly be expected to pay/afford the $7/month to Microsoft.

That said, the recommended solution is probably the best option for developers, not bedside because it's free, but for the ability to run complex SQL statements, and visualize the results.

If I were to edit this article, that'd be my takeaway: use tool X for snappy vitalization of SQL queries, even on multi gigabyte sized CSVs

<comment><USER10> > cannot possibly be expected to pay/afford the $7/month to Microsoft.

Especially after paying $2000+ for a mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how well would Table Tool [1] perform with your large dataset? This is an open source CSV editor for Mac from the developer of Postico, my favorite PostgreSQL client for Mac [2]

[1] [https://github.com/jakob/TableTool](https://github.com/jakob/TableTool)

[2] [https://eggerapps.at/postico/](https://eggerapps.at/postico/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Python + Pandas

<comment><USER13> Python + Pandas + Jupyter Notebook/Lab

<comment><USER14> Python + Jupyter OK, but pandas actually reads everything at once, doesn't it. 100MB is no problem but bigger files could result in high swapping pression.

<comment><USER15> I definitely agree that with this amount of data, you should move to a more programmatic way to handle it... pandas or R.

Keep in mind that pandas (and probably also R?) internally uses optimized structures based on numpy. So a 10 GB csv, depending on the content, might end up with a much smnaller memory footprint inside pandas.

If you have 10 GB csv, I think you will be happy working with pandas locally even on a Laptop. If you go to csv files with tens of GB, a cloud vm with corresponding memory might serve you well. If you need to handle big-data- scale csvs (hundreds of GB or even >TB), a scalable parallel solution like Spark will be your thing. Before you scale up however, maybe your task allows to pre-filter the data and reduces the amount by orders of magnitude... often, thinking the problem through reduces the amount of metal one needs to throw at the problem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use XSV: A fast CSV command line toolkit written in Rust.

[https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/xsv](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/xsv)

[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv)

<comment><USER17> You can use EBay tools as well, such as [https://github.com/eBay/tsv- utils](https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils) after importing a CSV file as TSV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am not clear what "manipulate" means here -- what is the author trying to do with the comma separated values? FWIW, I can accomplish csv manipulation using a handful of Unix utilities: sed, awk, cut, and call it a day.

<comment><USER19> The text in a column can be quoted and inside the quotes there can be escaped quotes or commas.

It requires a lot of sed awk skills to merge two columns or delete a column. If at all possible

<comment> grumpy-cowboy Yes, the "CSV road to hell":

\- comma separated, nothing escaped (crash when 1 column contains a comma)

\- comma separated, quotes around all elements, quotes not escaped

\- comma separated, double-quotes around all elements, double-quotes not escaped

\- comma separated, quotes around some elements, quotes not escaped

\- comma separated, double-quotes around some elements, double-quotes not escaped

\- comma separated, quotes around all elements, quotes escaped (using '')

\- comma separated, double-quotes around all elements, double-quotes escaped (using "")

\- comma separated, quotes around some elements, quotes escaped (using '')

\- comma separated, double-quotes around some elements, double-quotes escaped (using "")

\- comma separated, quotes around all elements, quotes escaped (using \')

\- comma separated, double-quotes around all elements, double-quotes escaped (using \")

\- comma separated, quotes around some elements, quotes escaped (using \')

\- comma separated, double-quotes around some elements, double-quotes escaped (using \")

And the Microsoft format (where comma == semi-colon):

\- semi-colon separated, nothing escaped (crash when 1 column contains a comma)

\- semi-colon separated, quotes around all elements, quotes not escaped

\- semi-colon separated, double-quotes around all elements, double-quotes not escaped

\- semi-colon separated, quotes around some elements, quotes not escaped

\- semi-colon separated, double-quotes around some elements, double-quotes not escaped

\- semi-colon separated, quotes around all elements, quotes escaped (using '')

\- semi-colon separated, double-quotes around all elements, double-quotes escaped (using "")

\- semi-colon separated, quotes around some elements, quotes escaped (using '')

\- semi-colon separated, double-quotes around some elements, double-quotes escaped (using "")

\- semi-colon separated, quotes around all elements, quotes escaped (using \')

\- semi-colon separated, double-quotes around all elements, double-quotes escaped (using \")

\- semi-colon separated, quotes around some elements, quotes escaped (using \')

\- semi-colon separated, double-quotes around some elements, double-quotes escaped (using \")

And I'm not talking about some weird custom CSV variants to support multi- lines for example or any other "I want to fit a circle in a square" mentality.

I don't know why people doesn't simply create TSV file (Tab-separated). No characters espacing mess. MUCHHH easier to parse.

EDIT: Formatting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://kothar.net/csview](https://kothar.net/csview)

A fast viewer a friend of mine created to view large CSVs in a GUI - might be useful to someone.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sublime Text and VSCode work fine with 1GB files in my experience.

<comment><USER22> I think the article tries to go into further depth beyond what a text editor can do on CSV files (filtering, sorting).

That said, worth mentioning CSV syntax highlighters for text editors. I've found rainbow csv quite helpful ([https://github.com/mechatroner/sublime_rainbow_csv](https://github.com/mechatroner/sublime_rainbow_csv))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There seem to be literally dozens of solutions to do read-only operations but very few to enable comfortable editing of the files in-place in a Unix / command line environment.

Seems like a real gap in the software ecosystem atm:

        - <USER2>
        - no limit on file size
        - spreadsheet style layout
        - command line
        - easily edit and update individual cell => save

I've tried VIM's CSV plugins many times and have never been satisfied.

<comment><USER24> Have you tried VisiData? [https://visidata.org](https://visidata.org).

<comment><USER23> Wow, that's exactly what I wanted - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> @alecdibble Could you try LibreOffice's Calc [1]? It's my daily driver in Linux, it mostly works well as an excel replacement but I'm interested to see how well it does on a Mac.

[1] [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/)

<comment><USER26> Maximum number of Rows per worksheet = 1 048 576 (2^20).

<comment><USER25> Apparently you should be able to go way above this [1].

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41213869/where-to- find-t...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41213869/where-to-find-the- base-module-of-libreoffice-that-has-no-row-limit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Was SequelPro trying impute any field types? That could have been causing the crash when faced with a large file.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe so as it was a CSV export from Sequel Pro. I could be wrong, but the import worked fine using the same file truncated to the first few thousand rows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> tad is absolutely great for this, i tested it for the exact use case mentioned. I had to file a ticket and wait for him to add an export to csv function. tad is built over sqlite and can filter/sort/pivot/aggregate and export the result, which is all my business team partners ever need. can handle GB files, i didnt test with TB size.

[https://www.tadviewer.com/](https://www.tadviewer.com/), its a desktop app

edit: one note after seeing other comments based on cli (xsv, sed, awk, etc) — the OP's use case is something that marketing/pm/business stakeholders can use. my favorite tools are cli-based, however this does not fly with business teams so forget that option.

</comment><comment><USER29> As a huge fan of OpenRefine, I want to say thanks for introducing me to Sequel Pro.

</comment><comment><USER30> Used VIM in the past to open several GB of SQL files to edit them without problems.

</comment><comment><USER31> Memory mapped file.. Intermediate binary representation..

</comment><comment><USER32> Why do you want to do that?

Use cat, pipe, grep, awk. Problem solved.

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally am not a huge fan of awk, I've never built a great mental model around its syntax and it doesn't really solve the problem I was talking about, which is getting a spreadsheet-like editing experience. Thanks for bringing it up, I should definitely add it to the article.

<comment><USER33> For the quoted spreadsheet-like operations of filtering and rearranging, awk is perfect as a deferred editor. That the kludgy first step of your chosen solution ("First, you must create a CSV file contain only the first 10-20 lines of your large CSV file") isn't just `head very_large_nov_2019.csv > very_large_nov_2019_abridged.csv` seems to further indicate an unfamiliarity with the large set of built-in, battle-tested UNIX tools for dealing with text files.

The first tools I reach for when dealing with CSVs of these and larger magnitudes are less, cut, awk, etc. They also tend to be the last tools I end up needing.

<comment><USER34> How well do those tools work with arbitrary CSV files, e.g. containing line breaks or quotes in field data? I wasn't aware that they can actually parse CSV and instead you have to assume things about the content that may not end up being true.

<comment><USER33> Every data processing task has to make assumptions about the well-formedness of its input. "Arbitrary CSV" is basically undefined; whether deviations are best dealt with by parsing, preprocessing, or different tools altogether depends on the source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm always astounded that there doesn't seem to be a decent general purpose CSV editor/viewer application. Excel is atrocious - it's always dog slow, and it mangles any CSV I've ever opened by trying to interpret the data to format it "smartly".

Having to build a table in a database and import the CSV into that feels a bit like hitting a house fly with a sledgehammer, but it's the most effective way I've seen.

<comment><USER36> One can convert CSV into JSON (a recipe is e.g. here - [https://infiniteundo.com/post/99336704013/convert-csv-to- jso...](https://infiniteundo.com/post/99336704013/convert-csv-to-json-with-jq) ) - in streaming fashion - and then use jq ( [https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) ) to do what one needs.</comment></comment>