Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/amazon-berkshire-jpmorgan-to-create-healthcare-company-jd1lraa9 <comment><USER2> > The three companies said they plan to set up a new independent company "that > is free from profit-making incentives and constraints."

I wonder if they will be setting it up as a health insurance cooperative, an organizational structure in which the primary goal is to serve its members, rather than to generate value for external shareholders: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_cooperative)

It's not at all unprecedented for publicly traded companies to create cooperatives for their employees. Employee credit unions are one example.

Co-ops were part of an early proposal while the ACA was still shaping out, but unfortunately, due to pressure from for-profit health insurers, they were later shot down: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/health/policy/17talkshows....](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/health/policy/17talkshows.html)

As a fan of distributism [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism), I would love to see an increase in health insurance cooperatives, and cooperatives in general. Under a cooperative structure, the members/policyholders fully own the company, so it's not beholden to outside shareholders seeking to profit at the expense of its members. Any profits that a cooperative generates are returned back to the members/policyholders in the form of lower premiums, or improvements to services.

<comment><USER3> > distributism

Thank you for giving a name to something I have been pondering a lot. I have come to this conclusion by thinking about automation and technological unemployment. If people own land, or productive tools, they can be self reliant and exist without jobs from corporations, or help from the state. Naturally people would organise as a cooperative or a market of services, exchanging services for services, because they have little money and no corporate jobs. Yet they can work, so they can create a kindergarten for children of the neighbourhood, or a medical clinic, or a mechanic repair-shop, or a construction company, and so on.

By combining these skills a neighbourhood, or a city could be self reliant. In the future, with the advent of solar energy, agro-bots, 3d-printing and other empowering technologies it will be even easier to be self reliant. I see this as a better solution to UBI which depends on the state, which is corruptible and the corporations, which are greedy. People would retain their agency, unlike in the UBI scenario, where they would be wards of the state.

There is no purpose to automation that does not exist in the service of humanity at large, but only for a few. Automation must be owned by the people directly. We need to have the means of production in our hands in order to survive. There is one single job the advancement of automation can't take from us - the job of taking care of ourselves! And that's hard work.

<comment><USER4> This is a type of utopia that many of us yearn for, but never appears to have worked at the level of large nation-states. I mean, here are some things that are not taken into account:

\- People who can not work because they simply can't hold down a job, period.

\- Externalities such as neighboring (or even distant) communes dumping wastewater into rivers etc., or polluting the ground, or air... you get the idea. What about natural calamities, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and such?

\- Conflicts over scarce resources. Water, for example. Communes that rely on a common source of water will likely have conflicts. How are they resolved?

\- Any commune is exceedingly unlikely to be good at producing all the things it needs. Trade will need to develop. Does 'self-reliance' exclude the possibility of trade?

\- How large should a commune be, to enable innovation? Without innovation, there will be stagnation that will harm the commune in the long run.

\- How would a commune handle people that are 'different'? How about criminals within and without?

<comment><USER5> Probably best to distinguish between "self-reliant economically, but connected to the world economy" vs "closed system". Trying to be self-reliant in terms of physical inputs doesn't work in the oil age. Whereas the various small and micro-states manage to be economically self-reliant while importing staples.

I don't think distributism requires a closed system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's what this is about. Large successful companies contract out their health insurance and care to external companies. Most of those companies are profit centers- they provide a service, but they take a very large profit on it. Much of that profit is just waste- it's money that goes to people who aren't innovating, or providing value, just acting as gatekeepers (note: this is just my opinion, not provable fact).

Companies like Amazon know they can provide that same service- or a simplified version of it that focuses on effective treatments that don't cost a lot of money- far more cheaply, because they have willingly forgone short-term profits.

Whether this saves money and provides adequate care remains to be seen.

<comment><USER7> Insurance companies, by and large, are gate keepers to capital. The "best" have a lot of highly innovate algorithms, machine learning, and data collection, but they're all designed to maximize the profit of the company by accurately pricing premiums. An accurately priced premium means customers who don't their services less pay less; in effect, they're using data to increase premiums for the customers who actually use their service, while increasing revenue in order to fund their massive, inefficient bureaucracy.

<comment><USER8> The last few insurance companies Ive delt with seem to act more like banks giving loans. Twice now, they have priced premiums for our company policy low in the first year before increasing them the following year based on how much was claimed. One agent actually admitted it was to "recoup costs".

We joked that the meme where actuaries were being replaced by machine learning was actually just the insurer firing actuaries because they figured out they could just demand the money back from the client after a claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I strongly feel that what needs to be changed is employer-based healthcare itself. It is really kind of crazy, if you think about it, how closely the quality of our healthcare and the healthcare of our dependents is tied to the company we choose to be working for at the moment.

If you or a dependent take a very specific expensive medication that isn't covered by a plan a new employer might offer, then you pretty much can't take that job unless you want to pay out of pocket.

Employers can change the plans they offer every year as well, so really even at the same company you might face the same dilemma at the next open enrollment.

<comment><USER10> I have a choice of exactly two health insurance companies because that's who my employer selected for me. Both are for profit companies, with Aetna just posting record profits, and we see our premiums rise year upon year.

But beyond me, the fact that someone working minimum wage, unemployed, or at a startup using the Obamacare exchange pays more than an executive at a fortune 500 makes no rational sense. That's because the market has been silo-ed by employer instead of each individual insured.

The US would be in a much better state if everyone had to get their insurance from the exchange. One of the two political parties is constantly drumming the "competition" drum as a magical solution, but they're too scared to actually make the market competitive.

\- Give everyone in the US a HSA (health savings account).

\- Increase HSA contribution maximums significantly ($20K/year or more)

\- Allow employers to give money, tax free, to employees via their HSA

\- Allow employees to pay their insurance premiums via the HSA

\- Ban employers from directly picking the employee's insurance or providing the insurance

\- Employees (and everyone else) would pick insurance from the health insurance marketplace

\- Medicaid would pay 100% of premiums, but Medicaid recipients still pick their own insurance

\- The VA would move to a mixed model, help pay for regular insurance (via the HSA), and offer bespoke services specific to former enlisted personnel. Most common services would be received at regular healthcare providers, not VA hospitals.

Now instead of employers paying $1000/month for your health insurance they put that $1000 into your HSA, you then go onto the health insurance marketplace find insurance, and use your HSA to pay your premiums. Don't like your insurance company? Change. This is how you spurn competition.

Additionally if your employer doesn't help you with health benefits, you can contribute to your HSA yourself tax free and you won't be further punished (i.e. pay the same overall premium, with same tax benefits, as someone with a better employer, unlike now).

<comment><USER11> This is what was talked about in the book "Redefining Health Care." The employer based model is totally broken.

What you're describing is more open capitalism in health care where everyone is on an open playing field. I use to really believe in this at one point years ago, even when working in Health Insurance.

Today, I'm not even for this compromise. I think it should be taken out of our taxes in single payer. Insurance would still be contracted out to those private insurers (cause America). We might even be able to create a system where people chose which insurance provider they use, but it should be payed for by taxes .. it's there for everyone and everyone pays the same proportion of income and everyone gets the same level of coverage. If something is in short supply, then it's going to need a needs based + lottery system (just like organ transplants currently).

For profit and _non-for-profit_ (not to be confused with non-profits; most health care companies are non-for-profits which is a weird legal area) have no place when it comes to public welfare services. People don't pay individually for private security/police. We don't pay for fire. We don't pay a fee to visit a city park (and I'm against fee based national parks actually). The general good should be paid for equally by everyone to their abilities.

<comment><USER12> > People don't pay individually for private security/police. We don't pay for > fire.

Sure they do. Rich people hire private security all the time. Heck, not-rich people do it too. Like your local Chuck E Cheese who hires a security guard on Friday night.

Same with fire protection. There are plenty of private fire protection companies.

Everyone gets those basic services paid for out of their taxes, but some people want more than basic service, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The OPs system would work great and you could modify it simply enough to account for your system too -- everyone pays a health tax, which is then redistributed as an HSA payment to every American, setting a base level of funding.

I'm actually a big fan of single payer, but not because of the social impacts, only because of the ease of administration aspects. But if you did OPs system and made sure everyone could participate, it would probably work just as well, because there would need to basically be a health payment cleaning house to make it work.

<comment><USER13> Germany is one of very few countries with a robust public insurance scheme which also allows private insurance, but I wouldn't expect that to last too much longer - there's a growing consensus (57.6% in a recent poll) around the idea that receiving faster or better care because you can pay more is fundamentally unfair.

People need the health care that they need. Unless we're talking about small things like your own private bed in a hospital, there's no room in a just society for a "basic service" which does not provide the best possible care.

<comment><USER12> > there's no room in a just society for a "basic service" which does not > provide the best possible care.

Unfortunately health care is still a finite resource, and you can't give everyone the best care. You either give some the best care and everyone else good care, or you give everyone pretty good care, but no one gets the best care.

Each has its merits, but my personal feeling is if no one gets "the best care", then we as a society will forget how to give such care, and medical innovation will become stagnant.

There is a reason that the health systems with at least some private participation (USA, France, Germany) also have the most innovation. We need a balance so there can still be a motive for innovation.

<comment><USER14> If everyone is super, then no one is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As some other people have mentioned below, the much lauded[1] vertically integrated health provider Kaiser Permanente started this way, as the health provider caring for the workers of an enlightened large employer, Kaiser Steel, which at the time was a massive shipbuilder for the Navy and others headquartered in California with a major presence in the SF Bay Area.

I was briefly covered by a Kaiser plan, and have a lot of old friends who are either covered, work there, or worked there, and can say people really appreciate not only the relatively low costs but also the ability to just come to one place no matter the ailment and know you'll be able to get an appointment quickly and be taken care of, and won't have to haggle to get the care you need or deal with insurance company roadblocks. To the extent there are downsides (and of course there are) they are around not being able to have your own doctor (though I do think there is an approximation of that) and overzealous cost cutting (see the kidney center scandal).

My understanding is Kaiser has not spread much beyond California due to regulatory issues.

(Interestingly, Kaiser Steel was a major setting for Atlas Shrugged.)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/kaiser- permanente...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/kaiser-permanente- is-seen-as-face-of-future-health-care.html)

<comment><USER16> Kaiser is no longer a low-cost provider. They actually are quite expensive. We go through a very large group to get a better rate but it's still much higher than many of the other options that we have in our plan.

When you look at how Kaiser is structured, they should be cheaper. I think they're just pocketing the difference between the market rate and what their costs are.

<comment><USER17> >I think they're just pocketing the difference between the market rate and what their costs are.

This is baseless and not really possible.

Insurers must spend 80% of premiums (85% for large group plans) on providing care for their insured.

<comment><USER18> > "There is no such thing as a legitimate price for anything in health care," > says George Halvorson, former chairman of Kaiser Permanente, the giant > health maintenance organization based in California. "Prices are made up > depending on who the payer is."

When you can game the pricing you can always just slice 80% from an ever increasing pie.

<comment><USER17> That's not really how it works. The "ever increasing" pie would have to come directly from increasing subscriber premiums, not from cutting costs and pocketing the difference the OP indicated.

It doesn't matter how much they play with pricing on the back end, the company can't make more than 20% profit from subscriber premiums.

<comment><USER18> There is a whole lot of backscratching with the profiteers taking their cut of the 80%. That is why we get $30 Tylenol pills under the guise of "care".

<comment><USER17> Hospitals aren't charging insurance companies $30 for Tylenol and then paying insurance companies under the table if that's what you're alleging.

That's completely illegal and it's just too noticeable for them to do it large scale.

The OP was making a baseless claim because they didn't know what they were talking about, and you're now grasping at straws supporting their claim for some reason.

<comment><USER18> None of the stakeholders in American for-profit healthcare have any incentive to reduce costs so everything just keeps ratcheting up. Growth can't be achieved by increasing the population of sick people so the only other option is to raise prices. The insurance companies _do_ benefit from this. They agree to cover the inflated pricing so that their 20% cut can be bigger. If ACA permitted rational price controls this whole problem would have been reigned in.

<comment><USER17> How does this have anything to do with

>I think they're just pocketing the difference between the market rate and what their costs are.

The OP had made a very specific claim about Kaiser. That Kaiser is reducing their costs but pocketing the savings and not passing them on to consumers.

I pointed out that there is no legal way for them to do that. You've made 3 posts and so far nothing you've said in anyway refutes that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not just the cost. It's the incredible inefficiency of the operations, and, the gerrymandering of coverage. Under the ACA, I had to choose between allowing my family to continue to see their lifetime care givers, or, paying in network rates, for the full year, because the insurance company I chose gave me incorrect information when they were trying to get my business (my wife is less kind in evaluating their motives). I paid $30,000 in health care expenses out of pocket that year for what was essentially a healthy family. I was not permitted to change insurance companies once I learned they had misled me.

Buffet calls them a tapeworm, I call it the next, ongoing rape of the American middle class.

<comment><USER20> I had the same unfortunate experience that in angers me to even think about it.

\- I leave my last employer on July 21, 2017

\- My old employer rols me off system on last day of July 2017

\- On June 2017, they switch HR providers from TriNET to Namely and now the payment processor is Discovery Benefits and the Dental/Vision are now in Guardian. (So it went from Aetna to Aetna/Guardian and two other companies).

Since my wife is high-risk and I have thyroid issues, our best bet was COBRA ($1,000 / mo) because the new startup I joined did not offer group health coverage.

What followed next was this:

\- The HR person who was handling my COBRA papers left during all of this. Switched jobs.

\- Thanksgiving break

\- Weeks of "the system will update this weekend with your information."

\- "They were suppose to process your dental, but they never did"

My wife and I tried using our new AETNA IDs once we had gotten them and they still told us that it did not work. I had to have an expensive thyroid blood test pushed back. Multiple dentist appointments postponed. Everything.

FINALLY, once I got my SSN and ID for my coverage on AETNA, I had to pay back premiums all the way back to August 2017 just to keep using my coverage. So that's $4,000 USD for services I could not essentially render. $4000 of my hard-earned money. Gone. For nothing -- basically.

They had the gall to tell me (AETNA did) "Sir, if you paid for anything out of pocket during the time of your retroactive coverage, we can pay you back any cost you incurred."

The whole reason we get insurance is to avoid those high prices.

I'm so spent. I'm not an angry man but these health insurance companies really drove it home for me.

I feel taken advantaged of and it really stinks.

<comment><USER21> "The whole reason we get insurance is to avoid those high prices."

But only for unpredictable, irregular events. Anything else is uninsurable. If someone sells you "insurance" for wellness checkups[1], regular, scheduled screenings ... or tires on your car ... you can be absolutely assured that they are taking from you as much, or more, in premiums than the cost of those services.

What you are looking for is socialized, state sponsored medical care. There is no problem in looking for that and I make no value judgement here on that.

The first step would be to stop mischaracterizing this as "insurance". It's not. It can't be.

[1] Yes, certainly wellness checkups and things like them can be enormously economically beneficial for the provider since they spend up front preventative dollars instead of emergency, acute dollars later but it still doesn't change the fact that those are not underwriteable as they are regular, on-going expenses - very much like the tires on your car.

<comment><USER22> Your comment seems to overlook the fact that insurance companies negotiate better rates on many (most?) services than an individual would get going at it alone. From that perspective, I think it's reasonable to say that in our current system, insurance can allow you to essentially avoid high prices even for things that are predictable/regular.

<comment><USER11> I worked in health care and saw so much money wasted. The ACA was suppose to bring the same risk factors to everyone, so you got the same premiums based on age, gender and smoking status. Big companies got big breaks for employees and the rich paid less.

This might have worked if everyone was required to buy from the market place and there were no employer plans. Obama's famous "You can keep your existing health coverage" was a terrible, terrible decision.

I watched the Medicare/Medicate group for my company and they might have complained about not getting enough money, but I really think they did. Things had fixed prices and there'd be plenty of money if BlueCross didn't spend money on advertising, useless wellness programs and shitty IBM technology.

Everyone should just get Meidcare/Medicade. The government won't control healthcare, it will just get contracted out to providers. They'll have to cut costs and not waste so much money (they waste A LOT!)

Capitalism + Health care is a failed experiment. Socialized health care does work, in every high income country that's not the United States. Australia fought against the Abbot government when they wanted to introduce copays. That's right, Australians don't have doctor co-pays (they kinda do now, but wavers are in place and the plan was effectively defeated).

The fact that the US government requires us to buy private health insurance at insane rates is absolutely insane and the Supreme Court should have struck it down. You are not a car. Your body shouldn't have a fee for existing.

<comment><USER23> It shouldn't have a fee for existing so long as you're cool with me not paying a fee for when your body breaks down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 27 days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16060201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16060201)

> Could this problem be attacked by a goodwill billionaire with a long-term > plan? Open several private medical schools that will offer "free" med > education in exchange for multi-year contracts. Open many small copycat > clinics. Manufacture your own generics if possible, import whatever is > cheapest, focus on things you can do cheap, be transparent about pricing, > build awareness and brand. McDonaldize/Amazonize American healthcare.

<comment><USER25> > McDonaldize/Amazonize American healthcare

CVS is sorta trying to do that (acquisition of Aetna is a big pointer)

<comment><USER26> After this deal was worked out, I could no longer fill prescriptions at Walgreens. Not what I would call an improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> After my wife giving birth last year, I would say there is quite a bit of room for improvement. The whole billing process is such a mess when you receive different bills from doctors, the hospital, labs, etc. It seemed like the bills rolled in for months afterward, some going through insurance and some not even being billed to insurance.

Happy to have insurance after I saw the total bill, but man is it a huge headache.

I hope they figure something out if we never make it to a single payer type system.

<comment><USER28> It's worse if you get the surprise "Out of Network" doctor that assisted in the delivery. Nothing like getting a surprise $1,200 bill when you're sleep deprived. Long story short, we didn't have to pay any of that $1,200. But the last thing we needed with a new born was more stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Below is the spend by the major groups from [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638261/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638261/)

All individuals with chronic conditions and functional limitations - $909 billion

Individuals aged ≥ 65 y with chronic conditions and functional limitations - $543 billion

Individuals at the end of life - $205 billion.

I am not sure you can save any healthcare costs unless 1\. People change their eating and lifestyle habits. 2\. End of life care is about 13% of the entire cost. Not sure how it compares to other countries but I think it can be optimized. 3\. Most of the costs are due to Medicare and Medicaid which due to the volume set the prices for the entire healthcare market. Due to a law passed by congress Medicare is prohibited from negotiating prices. The most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

<comment><USER30> You're looking at top-line cost to provide care in a very convoluted market. Take chronic for example, a huge chunk is spent on drug treatment. Incentives to use generics are often misaligned from the needs of the patient.

Also, about 10-15% of the $3 trillion is administrative waste (payers). There are a lot of areas that we can save.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A brief plug for anyone interested in starting in this space. I'm an engineer at RedoxEngine[0] where we build a system to transform the many varying forms of Healthcare data into an easy to use JSON API[1]. This has proven to reduce development time and increase the available pool of Healthcare Organizations that your product can connect with[2]. I'm pretty happy working here and seeing the types of solutions that our product enables/expedites. If you're interested in the space feel free to PM me regarding questions. It's an exciting time to be working in the rewarding field of Healthcare Technology!

0: [https://www.redoxengine.com/](https://www.redoxengine.com/) 1: [https://developer.redoxengine.com/](https://developer.redoxengine.com/) 2: [https://www.redoxengine.com/customer- stories](https://www.redoxengine.com/customer-stories)

</comment><comment> noir-york Three large employers, realising that for-profit healthcare is expensive and inefficient, create a non-profit that pools healthcare and is driven by its member's interests.

This is terrible if it works.

Imagine if other employers want to join it. And then even more employers... and what if the scheme becomes so large and covering so much of the population that it ... gasp... looks almost like a government-run non-profit health insurance scheme! You know, like what those Marxists in Europe have.

And where it would it end - soon people would be demanding cheaper drug prices and being able to negotiate prices for drugs! Insane

(In case its not clear, the above is written ironicly. I am all for a well funded government-run health service)

<comment><USER32> Except that it's not a monopoly. There are still options that will compete with each other.

<comment> noir-york There will be economies of scale. The bigger the pool of employees the lower the costs, so yes there are options but they could get fewer if this takes off.

<comment><USER33> Nobody opposes economies of scale.

What we oppose is being forced by the government to accept a 1 size fits all plan, and not being allowed to buy the healthcare plan we want.

It is the difference between everyone using Facebook because they like the product and the network effect, vs everyone using governmentBook because the government outlawed all competing social networks.

<comment><USER34> Everyone who says, "Why should I have to pay for poor people's health care?" is opposed to economies of scale.

<comment><USER33> If the US only allowed one grocery store to exist, that would have economies of scale as well.

Shouldn't we then give everyone "food insurance" which you pay for with taxes, and then are able to use that food insurance to get food from the store for free? (well, not really free, paid for by your taxes). You'd pay a predetermined amount of money no matter what you got from the store, but your options would be limited by the government food insurance committee.

If you don't support this single payer food insurance solution to all of your caloric needs, then my question for you is why do you hate poor people?

<comment> noir-york Government provision does NOT stop the private sector from providing options. It is not an either government OR private. But both. Your example does not exist anywhere, nor is it what it is being advocated.

To be realistic your example would be as follows: what if the US provided a grocery store that provided the basic necessities, free at the point of provistion and paid for by common taxation. People are free to buy the nice wine from the private provider next door BUT if you fall on hard times and you need to put food on the table, the rest of your fellow citizens help pay to make sure you, your partner, and your children have food to eat, and retain a semblance of human dignity, until you can get back on your feet and pay taxes that provide for someone else who needs help.

<comment><USER32> Where does it stop? If "healthcare is a right" and "food is a right" and "shelter is a right" who is going to pay for all of these services for all of these people when they have no vital need to go out and support themselves? Who's going to maintain the sewers and take care of the trash and all of the jobs that most people don't want to do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This might have sparked it: [https://qz.com/1090762/an-open-letter-to-jeff- bezos-you-are-...](https://qz.com/1090762/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos-you- are-needed-to-disrupt-the-health-care-sector/) (2017)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd join that company. First thing I'd do is properly line item every coded expense and expose it to the end user, and compare it with averages of other providers. Expose people to where they are being ripped off and where they can get better prices.

</comment><comment><USER37> Everyone focuses on the wrong problem - the insurance. Why do doctors and hospitals charge exorbitantly? 10 - 25 times for the same quality, equipment elsewhere in the world. There are just not enough doctors and they take advantage of that. Let qualified doctors get in the country. When they undercut these blood suckers, prices go down.

<comment><USER38> Hospitals, at least, over charge to cover their losses with people without insurance or inadequate insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These companies collectively have hundreds of thousands of employees that cost many billions each year to insure. Large U.S. employers are what you call in the industry "self funded", meaning they collect premiums from their own funds + employee contributions into a big pool and pay out claims from this pool (i.e. they take on all the insurance risk). Any optimizations they can make to plan administration, healthcare utilization (i.e. incentivizing employees to choose less expensive forms of healthcare or get healthier), lower drug costs, lower administrative cost, etc. will save them many billions of dollars annually.

Saying this new venture is going to be free of profit-making is a bit like saying water is "sugar free." This is all about lowering their own cost of employing a massive workforce.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've always wondered what's stopping someone from creating a non-profit and just having people join it in order to give the non-profit ability to negotiate lower prices.

I imagine there's a cost to set this up, but is that cost less than the marginal cost of each employee and the savings they would (presumably) receive if enough people joined?

<comment><USER40> > I've always wondered what's stopping someone from creating a non-profit and > just having people join it in order to give the non-profit ability to > negotiate lower prices.

Likely the fact that many of these prices are basically standardized because of CMS. Providers basically look to what the Medicare/Medicaid standard is as a benchmark for pricing.

As a provider why accept a lower price from insurance when the gov't is providing a backlog of people at predetermined prices?

\-----

Unless these companies are also looking to enter the provider space, they will likely only competing on marginally better insurance rates.

<comment><USER41> > As a provider why accept a lower price from insurance when the gov't is > providing a backlog of people at predetermined prices?

This isn't even an option on the table. Private insurers are generally required by law to pay more than Medicare does.

And besides, Medicare reimburses rates that are below COGS, so providers charge private insurers more in order to make up the difference. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to accept Medicare patients at all; they'd literally lose money on a per patient basis.

<comment><USER23> This is so important and so little understood: Medicare can demand the prices that it does because other payers will be making up for it. Their low prices create externalities in the rest of the insured market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I work for a healthcare services company. The industry is ripe for disruption just in the way data is handled and managed. What I found interesting in the article is that the new firm would not be "profit seeking". Interesting. I wonder if Amazon would do what they did for years and put any and all profits back into the new company. But then why partner with an investment bank?

<comment><USER43> > But then why partner with an investment bank?

Financial security in exchange for points?

Amazon already did the profitless thing for a decade+. It's betting on its ability to do it again in a bigger market, but a market with a ton of unknowns. Having some financial backing by an investment bank might be something of a safety net.

Maybe Amazon was never certain AWS would work out, but look where it is now. If you could get in as an investor on Amazon's next AWS, wouldn't you take the risk?

<comment><USER42> Of course I would. I think the world knows not to invest against Bezos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I am continually surprised with the focus on attacking the "packaging" of healthcare at the insurance / network / reimbursement level. That isn't the problem that needs to be solved. The problem with healthcare costs is that there is a lack of competition of costly services provided by large hospital and clinics. In many areas, there is a single provider that runs unchecked. Two factors limiting competition are:

1) Huge barriers to entry. How do you start a new hospital or sizable clinic? Regulation, costs, training, etc make it prohibitively difficult 2) Science/data isn't good enough yet. There is not sufficient data to show which providers (hospitals/clinics/treatments) are better than others, enough to allow disruptive entrants into the system.

Only breakthroughs in biotechnology that displace incumbents in healthcare services will move the need. Re-shuffling the insurance / network / payment deck of cards aren't enough.

<comment><USER45> > The problem with healthcare costs is that there is a lack of competition of > costly services provided by large hospital and clinics.

That doesn't seem to be the problem. Particularly, it is _not_ a differentiator between the US and many systems with better cost-for-outcome profiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think one of the big ideas that is being tested out there is getting rid of the adversarial economics of insurance in general. The whole industry is basically optimizing towards paying out as little while maximizing what they can get. Such cynicism is being broken in some sectors. Like Lemonade is really trying a radical new behavioral approach.

</comment><comment><USER47> I always think that it's only a matter of time before some company with vast capital (looking at you Apple) finds their own way to set up a city/country with their own ecosystem (healthcare, transport etc.), with less bureaucracy and more efficiently.

<comment><USER48> Company towns are not a new thing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town)

Your idea was first attempted in the 1880's :)

<comment><USER49> This concept also seems appropriate (extrapolation): [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_republic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_republic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I feel there will be a series of HC acquisitions ranging from unicorn startups to major HC providers. I don't have to name the qualified startups, they are too well known... Great time to join an insurance startup!!!

</comment><comment><USER51> It is a welcoming move. I hope they make it available for public sector as well. I would be more than happy to have my prescriptions delivered using Amazon Prime same day/2nd day service.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've long wondered how we've allowed insurance companies to operate as public, for-profit entities—it's a complete conflict of interests.

Hopefully this deal creates a ripple effect non-employees of these three companies can benefit from.

<comment><USER53> > how we've allowed

Personally, I've always wondered why we blithely accept having incredibly expensive shit services and coverage dictated to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Rolling their own health care company might solve only part of the issue. I think the largest driver of healthcare costs right now is price gouging by providers with their charge masters, needless exams and procedures.

</comment><comment><USER55> "Amazon Prime, now with basic health insurance included in one low yearly or monthly rate"!

<comment><USER56> AmazonBasics Chemotherapy - 3.8 stars at an unbeatable price.

<comment><USER57> With the reach that they would have at a low price point and the ability to match that to your other purchase, I'd love to get that data and look into behaviours that trigger cancer or are correlated with faster remission.

Cheap medicine is good medicine because it's data-rich medicine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> One reason this is likely to be less expensive is that the employees of those companies tend to be well paid and to have had ongoing access to health care. Essential tasks ordinarily done by the working poor are usually outsourced. In the case of Amazon, it's not just things like facilities maintenance and janitorial workers that won't fall under its health care umbrella, it's all those warehouse workers engaged in physical work.

Essentially, the costs will be lower because the new company will cherry pick. And again in the case of Amazon, the tendency to hire young workers also works in favor of lower costs. This is disruption in the same sense that Amazon's pillaging the public purse for its new headquarters is disruption.

</comment><comment><USER59> You guys can fight how to turn your money hungry insurance companies into decent "patient caring" entities or you can do like the rest of the developed countries and adopt a basic single payer system where everybody pays for everybody and if you so which you can still purchase the best private health insurance for a couple hundred bucks a month.

Example:

For my wife and I, one insurance company has quoted us $AU600 a month for the top of the line health insurance with no deductible and very little waiting periods.

Also if we decide to not go down that road, we can go to the doctor and the hospital for free without any worries about money.

How about that?

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm a lead dev at a small, but fast-growing healthcare IT company and I can say that healthcare is _nothing_ like the markets that amazon is currently in. It is so incredibly fragmented and the laws vary state to state. In Maryland, where I live, we have a single, very competent and well-funded HIE called CRISP. California, in contrast, has like 20 different regional HIE's with not much support from the state AFAIK. I think they're going to be surprised how crazy the healthcare markets are.

</comment><comment><USER61> We've moved from trying to get to single-payer government provided healthcare all the way to tax cuts. This change of mindshare for the USA means more believe that health issues are more self-inflicted than random unluckiness.

There is truth to both sides, and I am in the single payer camp. However, I know that most doctors visits in the US are the result of obesity, lack of exercise, and lack of education. These things need to change much earlier down the funnel, but they don't.

</comment><comment><USER62> As the FT reports ([https://app.newsoveraudio.com/article/3324](https://app.newsoveraudio.com/article/3324)) isn't this much the same as the Healthcare Transformation Alliance in which IBM, Shell and Verizon (to name a few) are members of?

>> [http://www.htahealth.com/](http://www.htahealth.com/)

</comment><comment><USER63> This sounds very promising especially considering Amazon's logistical expertise and amount of financial resources these 3 companies have.

<comment><USER64> Hopefully it can materialize into something that can have an impact on the healthcare industry, but it's disheartening seeing no doctors or anyone with medical expertise in the mix.

<comment><USER65> I think you have more faith in doctors than me. The way the California Medical Association (and the AMA) resist expanding the role of nurses really damaged their reputation for me.

Rising medical costs and increased consumption of medical services is good for physicians.

Freakonomics did a pretty good podcast[1] on the subject.

[1]: [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/nurses-to-the- rescue/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/nurses-to-the-rescue/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Is there a new wave of innitiatives in the health sector? I was surprised by hospitals working on producing generic drugs [1].

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/hospitals-plan-to-create- the...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/hospitals-plan-to-create-their-own- generic-drug-company.html)

</comment><comment><USER67> "Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner's mind, and a long- term orientation." - Jeff Bezos

Solid start-up tips

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm neutral on the particulars of this venture (it's probably positive). But how can anyone argue that the market is efficient when it is possible for companies that "is free from profit-making incentives" to exist? Just curious. How does this example fit into that framework?

<comment><USER69> > _how can anyone argue that the market is efficient when it is possible for > companies that "is free from profit-making incentives" to exist?_

"Commoditise your complements" is an old and true business mantra. It's the reason it's good business for Google to promote an open web or investment banks to promote mutually-owned, virtually profitless settlement & clearing organizations like the DTCC and SWIFT. Much of the robber baron era's drama centred around steel trying to commoditise railroads, railroads steel, and oil the whole lot.

<comment><USER70> Doing some research, "Commoditize your complements" (American rather than British spelling) seems to trace to Joel on Software, 2002:

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy- letter-v/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> What if Amazon could launch a subscription-based Amazon Prime type healthcare offering that would include: \- access to telemedicine service. \- low-cost drug delivery service. \- access to wearables for remote monitoring of patients. Let's see!

</comment><comment><USER72> Since this a free market heath care, clearly it should have full bipartisan support in Washington.

</comment><comment><USER73> > they plan to collaborate on a way to offer health-care services to their > U.S. employees.

Is it clear that they will be offering these services to outside clients? Or is this just a way to keep down Healthcare costs across their organizations?

<comment><USER74> I don't know. But a quick Google search indicates that these 3 companies have over 1 million employees. But that's world wide. Still that's an impressive number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Just come to Canada.

We already figured out how to do Health Care where everyone pays.

</comment><comment><USER76> I have far more faith that these three companies, more than the government, can improve the catastrophe that is our healthcare system.

</comment><comment><USER77> So JPMorgan is helping to create a company "that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints."

I don't buy it.

<comment><USER78> Well, I think it could make sense in that this new healthcare company's goal is to lower the costs Amazon, Berkshire, and JPMorgan pay for healthcare for their respective employees.

So I think it's possible that the healthcare company exists "free from profit- making incentives and constraints" while also aligning with JPMorgan's goal of increasing profits by lowering their corporate healthcare costs.

If this also increases employee happiness by way of lower payments and better service, I see a world where all of the above is possible and it works out better for all (except rival healthcare providers).

Though I tend to side with you and am dubious until proven otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I could be wrong, but if I understand correctly this healthcare company is for their employees only? (At least at first).

</comment><comment><USER80> Tomorrow's news: Google announces a healthcare initiative where AI & bots will drive consumers mad

</comment><comment><USER81> What about a series of free top notch clinics? Or do these three combined not have enough global revenue yet?

</comment><comment><USER82> Is it too much to ask that my health care isn't beholden to the whims of a bunch of billionaires?

<comment><USER83> It's pretty difficult for anyone else to seriously enter the marketplace

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I hope this new company has a huge lobbying arm from day 1.

</comment><comment><USER85> Why those weren't not split AT&T style to avoid the 100000ft pound corporatist rule, I don't know.

Or rather, I know.

</comment><comment><USER86> Tragedy of the commons much? It's disturbing to see corporations occupy the vacuum US policy has left here.

<comment><USER87> >> occupy the vacuum US policy has left

Others might argue this is free market at work.

<comment><USER88> It depends on whether or not you view healthcare as a basic right for citizens (in the same sense as education and law enforcement etc.)

The free market coming up with a co-op approach that may only benefit the handful of companies involved only benefits me if I'm in one of those companies.

<comment><USER89> Any one who is arguing that this is the free market at work doesn't believe that healthcare is a right. You can have access to healthcare, but that doesn't guarantee that you will.

<comment><USER90> >Any one who is arguing that this is the free market at work doesn't believe that healthcare is a right. You can have access to healthcare, but that doesn't guarantee that you will.

 _This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor._ \- MLK

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> This move is very needed competition and is a start to fix pricing and hopefully smarter grouping.

But, ultimately health insurance should be something people get on their own like other insurance, healthcare needs to be unbound from employers in our system.

Part of the problem with pricing is the health insurance companies are not consumer focused due to their main customers being employers not individuals. Other insurance industries (auto, home, life etc) have to be consumer friendly, you can see it in the marketing you see, they need consumers to buy on their own.

Health insurance companies like Aetna/BCBS/etc fix prices in backrooms with employers, medical services, hospitals, doctors and more. Current healthcare players actively price out individuals due to legacy grouping by companies not individuals across many ages/spectrums. Grouping by employer leaves self- proprietors, small companies and more with higher healthcare bills due to them being more risky because they are small. Smart grouping would be across all customers not just by employer/company, that is a game to get prices lower in certain companies that are larger unfairly.

Employers should have zero involvement with your health other than paying you enough to go get insurance on your own, whether that is single payer public option or private insurance. Healthcare tied to employment has problems as it makes it harder to change jobs, start a company, ageism, and if you ever do need it, if you lose your job you are out of luck.

ACA started the process to unbind health insurance from employers and hopefully this Amazon/Berkshire/JPM product/company will be consumer focused unlike current health insurance companies, and start to fix healthcare to be consumer focused like products should be.

At this point both the Amazon and CVS ventures are adding needed competition, as healthcare costs are starting to cut into consumer funds heavily. Healthcare is stealing other industries profits via this encroachment. Health insurance companies used every excuse and love the legislative turmoil because they can raise prices without checks in the chaos.

Hopefully the unbinding of healthcare from employment continues, whether through better consumer focused healthcare companies or a single payer public option like Medicare-for-all that the consumer can choose between, as that is the only thing that will start to fix pricing and grouping.

This is very smart for Amazon as healthcare is still completely undisrupted and ripe for competition, tons of technology and product opportunities and literally any effort is better than what we currently have for health insurance, the only product that gets worse every year and goes up by a minimum of 20-30% yearly in some cases 120% which is impossible to continue.

</comment><comment><USER92> The beginnings of enclaves.

</comment><comment><USER93> I read it as "Apple, Berkshire and JPMorgan" at first, and I was very excited to see such a customer-first company finally taking on healthcare.

Then I read the top comment and saw Bezos. Oh. It's Amazon.

I do not want my medical provider and experience to be optimized to the point of insanity.

Healthcare needs to be fixed, but I'm pretty sure these three companies will create a monster worse than the one we currently endure. (Profits or not.)

<comment><USER94> Yes, Apple is better. They'll slowly reduce dosage as you grow older so you can get a more expensive medicine.

Amazon is much more customer-first than Apple is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> When i think of disruption i think of uber. Rides where none could happen before.

What will their disruption be?

How about delinking insurance to healthcare. Let me buy healthcare the day i need it. And nothing the day after i dont.

No more having healthy people pay for sick people: no more young pay for the old.

Create something we cant imagine; like uber; like Facebook

<comment><USER96> I mean, you can always pay for healthcare the day you need it. It's just incredibly expensive.

And don't forget, one day you'll be old or sick, so I hope you have a lot of money saved :)

<comment><USER95> Im talking about totally thinking differently, not the current situation.

About having a lot of money saved....after a prosthetic implant i added up stuff. $143,000 spent on insurance since 2005. Part employer part me. Up until the prosthetic less than $5k (if that) on health. $143k is almost 3 years pay. I would have rather had it paid to me. Then i would have spent my money for my healthcare

<comment><USER97> > $143k is almost 3 years pay. I would have rather had it paid to me. Then i > would have spent my money for my healthcare

What would you do in the unfortunate event that you required medical treatment that cost 10x your annual pay (a real possibility)?

Absent an insurance policy, who would you expect to pay for that? Or would you instead expect your employer to pay you (and everyone else) the maximum theoretical health care costs you might incur? That's not possible in any system.

The point of shared risk pools is to protect people against such extreme outlier costs, and you've been the beneficiary of other people keeping up their end of that contract.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article235973882.html <comment><USER2> >...granted Google permission Wednesday to pump 549 million gallons of water out of the ground each year to cool servers at its sprawling plant in Berkeley County.

>DHEC's decision is the latest development in a bitter fight over whether the company should get state approval to withdraw from a major groundwater source that, critics say, is dwindling and in jeopardy of being further depleted.

Just put the warmed water back? It's not like it's being contaminated or anything.

<comment><USER3> This water will be used in evaporative coolers. There won't be warmed water to return.

The water gets recycled 50-100 times, and each time a small percentage evaporates into a cloud.

The cloud really does make clouds.

<comment><USER4> Evaporative coolers in low country South Carolina? Is there a more humid place on Earth?

<comment><USER5> There won't be as soon as this plant becomes operational.

<comment><USER6> > as soon as this plant becomes operational

It's been operational for 10+ years. [https://goo.gl/maps/XLEegK3rH1AqUXpw8](https://goo.gl/maps/XLEegK3rH1AqUXpw8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On one hand, at an industrial scale that isn't _that_ much water: e.g. my local utility that serves 20,535 customer locations across 75 square miles provides about 2.2 billion gallons of water per year.

On the other hand, it's a fair amount of water for cooling... wag numbers ignoring the environmental conditions of their location (and water hardness) would have me guessing their load would be on the order 100 - 300 megawatts to need that much make-up water. Could be off by an order of magnitude, but clearly it's a lot of heat regardless.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a water resources engineer. In my experience, this is approximately enough water to supply 15,000 people on an average daily basis.

<comment><USER9> Are you saying the average person uses 36,600 gal per year? That seems very high.

<comment><USER10> 549mil gallons allowed to use in a year divided by 365 days equals 1,504,109 daily average for google (let's round to 1.5mil).

USGS estimates 80-100 gallons per American per day.

1,500,000 google's daily average water use / 100 gallons per American per day = 15,000

Google will use roughly the equivalent of 15,000 Americans worth of daily water.

Further math:

100 gallons per American per day x 365 days = 36,500 per person per year.

Edit: Had a before coffee typo and added some more math

<comment><USER11> Does that number include the water cost of the food we eat? Or is it only direct personal usage?

<comment><USER10> "Estimates vary, but, on average, each person uses about 80-100 gallons of water per day, for indoor home uses."

[https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science- school/scie...](https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science- school/science/water-qa-how-much-water-do-i-use-home-each-day?qt- science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this was a rubber gasket plant in South Carolina getting a water permit, it would never have hit the news.

<comment><USER13> Do you have any evidence for this claim? Does comparing two separate things automatically make them equivalent?

On the flip side, when Foxconn wanted 7 million gallons of water each day from Lake Michigan for it's manufacturing plant, it hit the news.

\- [https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-foxconn- air-p...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-foxconn-air- pollution-20180129-story.html)

<comment><USER12> How many news about getting water permit you heard last month? How many water permits are issued daily in the country?

<comment><USER13> So, it's safe to assume that you have no evidence?

The article itself links to another article they wrote on the usage of groundwater from mega farms. I don't know the answers to your questions because I don't track those things. I do have the ability to search Google and prove your initial claim wrong (before you moved the goalposts).

\- Here's an article from 4 days ago about an unrelated project [1]

\- And one from 3 days ago on a different project [2]

\- Here's a different article from today about another project[3]

\- One from last week in a different state [4]

[1] [http://www.chroniclenewspaper.com/news/local-news/county- att...](http://www.chroniclenewspaper.com/news/local-news/county-attorney- says-greens-of-chester-has-water-permit-BB560120)

[2] [https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/401-water-quality- certific...](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/401-water-quality- certification-26357/)

[3] [https://www.enr.com/blogs/12-california- views/post/47743-cal...](https://www.enr.com/blogs/12-california- views/post/47743-california-supreme-court-rejects-environmental-challenges-to- monterey-water-project)

[4] [https://www.duncanbanner.com/oklahoma/news/gravel-mining- per...](https://www.duncanbanner.com/oklahoma/news/gravel-mining-permit- application-prompts-concerns/article_60a243b5-4fa4-544c-95cc- efa981b36759.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >In addition to Google's request in the Charleston area, mega farms in central South Carolina have been under scrutiny over the amount of groundwater they use to irrigate crops each summer.

549 million gallons is about 1685 acre feet, which isn't very much irrigation water. South Carolina golf courses alone use 9.7 million gallons/day of groundwater for irrigation or 3,540 million gallons per year. SC golf courses use a combined total of groundwater and surface water of 14,991 millon gallons per year.

[https://waterdata.usgs.gov/sc/nwis/water_use?format=html_tab...](https://waterdata.usgs.gov/sc/nwis/water_use?format=html_table&rdb_compression=file&wu_area=State+Total&wu_year=2015&wu_category=IG&wu_category_nms=Irrigation%252C%2BGolf%2BCourses)

<comment><USER15> > South Carolina golf courses alone use 9.7 million gallons/day of groundwater > for irrigation or 3,540 million gallons per year. SC golf courses use a > combined total of groundwater and surface water of 14,991 millon gallons per > year.

That's insane

<comment><USER14> SC has an area of 32,000 square miles or 20,480,000 acres. The average annual rainfall is about 4 feet. So that is about 80 million acre-feet of precipitation. Converting from acre feet to gallons gives 26,000,000 million gallons of rainfall annually. Depending on hurricanes, it could be more, much more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't see why water used for cooling can't later be used as irrigation water

<comment><USER17> It evaporates in the chiller towers.

[https://intra.ece.ucr.edu/~sren/project/water/img/water_cool...](https://intra.ece.ucr.edu/~sren/project/water/img/water_cooling.jpg)

<comment><USER18> ...and then comes down as rain somewhere else, eventually.

<comment><USER19> If that somewhere else is too far away it won't help refill South Carolina's aquifers.

<comment><USER20> Charleston is over the Florida aquifer system, which is one of the largest aquifer systems in the world since the peninsula is essentially a huge sedimentary filter that's saturated by really aggressive storms on a seasonal basis

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why ground water and not river water? Aquifers in CA are already collapsing and will not recover.

</comment><comment><USER22> > "We strive to build sustainability into everything that we do"

I very much hope at least a part of the heat is converted back to electrical energy...

<comment><USER23> This isn't always practical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why are they using plain groundwater to cool servers? Maybe I'm being naive here by thinking there is something much cooler they could do.

</comment><comment><USER25> SC = The state of South Carolina, for non-American readers.

It's a shame that the article doesn't define acronyms on first use.

<comment><USER26> It's a South Carolina newspaper.

I for one am glad that writers keep context in mind when writing things.

Otherwise your comment would have to be:

"SC = The state of South Carolina, one of the 50 states in the United States of America which is a country in the continent of North America and is often referred to as the USA, for people who don't live in the USA."

I think this is a good time to talk about one of my biggest pet peeves. Aggregators like HN, while extremely useful, remove context from the articles they link to. I think it's extremely important for readers to read the links, after reading the site's about page, and maybe quickly glancing through the Wikipedia, or bio page (of the author), if it exists.

Actively creating the context should be a skill we should be teaching children in school, since the Internet has made things that we would otherwise never have been aware of so easily accessible.

<comment><USER27> Reductio ad absurdum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm sure that people who decided it were well compensated, who are you to disagree?

<comment><USER29> Extraordinary to claim that this decision is the result of corruption, you got any evidence or you just inventing stuff in your head?

<comment><USER30> Extraordinary? This happens all the time, maybe not with hard cash but plenty of other methods

<comment><USER31> It does but Google has a very very strict policy about not greasing wheels. People have been fired over it and not reimbursed for the out of pocket expense. It made building infrastructure in India take exponentially longer than competitors who were willing to play according to the unspoken rules. Google can't be trusted but not everything they do or every way they operate is bad.

<comment><USER2> Google has spent $21,770,000 on lobbying in 2018.

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00006782...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000067823&year=2018)

<comment><USER31> So the implied argument is that lobbying is inherently corrupt?

<comment><USER32> In your opinion what differentiates the two?

<comment><USER33> One of them is illegal.

<comment><USER34> Once you start lobbying/influencing what laws exist, you forfeit the right to justify your actions purely on what's legal.

Mainly: if you spend large amounts of money to stop an action becoming illegal or to make it legal, then you can't justify the action by saying "it's legal" without also justifying why it _should_ be legal - given that you just assisted create a law. Amoral actors should not be allowed to control the legal system that keeps them in line.

<comment><USER33> Is there some evidence that Google has been a significant force lobbying in favor of the laws that make lobbying legal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow using ground water to cool down computers? Is there no other water supply available?

Ofc a Google rep says how they are environmentally committed. Obv they'd never say if they didn't give a shit. What a useless comment.

Clean unpolluted ground water is probably the most precious resource there is.

<comment><USER3> Sewage (after treatment) can also be used to cool servers. Some big companies do this.

I'd guess groundwater was cheaper than sewage in this specific location.

<comment><USER36> what about seawater?

i know that san onofre used to be cooled that way... or do they require basically non saline water for this...

<comment><USER37> Seawater is very hard and harsh to deal with.

The intakes tend to clog with marine growth -- everything from barnacles and oysters to algae. Pipes have to be corrosion-reistant (not iron or steel). If you're using evaporative cooling, you end up with saline concentrate. If you're using dual-cycle systems ("clean" inner cooling loop, "dirty" outer loop), you have the issue of dumping thermal load into the oceans, which can affect sea life. And to boot, east-coast US seawater isn't all that cold due to the Gulf Stream -- 22-26C (72-76F) off the coast of the Carolinas, though subsurface temps may be lower. California's coastal waters are far cooler, about 15C (60F) presently, and dropping toward 10C (50F) in winter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What web framework should I use nowadays? - <AUTHOR> With many Programming languages and Web frameworks available these days ( Laravel for PHP, Rails for Ruby, Revel for GO, Django for Python) I am really confused about which one to use. Could you please suggest me the best of above based on different aspects?<p>Thanks in advance, Ehsan <comment><USER2> Personally, I highly recommend Django.

\- It is very powerful, elegant, and extremely fun to use. \- It has amazing resources and documentation. \- It is written in Python. That's a major advantage because pyhon is used everywhere, and if you get good at it - you'll be able to easily experiment with other areas of programming.

The easiest way to start is to watch tuts+ Django Unchained course[1]. It's a great and easy to understand introduction that takes you through the process of creating a hackernews clone.

Then you should buy 2 Scoops of Django [2], it's the best resource to learn Django in more depth.

[1] [http://code.tutsplus.com/courses/django- unchained](http://code.tutsplus.com/courses/django-unchained) [2] [https://www.twoscoopspress.com/products/two-scoops-of- django...](https://www.twoscoopspress.com/products/two-scoops-of-django-1-8)

<comment><USER3> I taught myself django earlier this year after years of java development.

From my experience there is a steeper learning curve for django than flask, but once there its fairly easy to use.

2 scoops is a good book - but it would be good to see fully worked example in the book. Its also got a learnign curve as its teaching you the authors approach to building django which may be different to other tutorials

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't listen to any comments that give you definitives on popularity. Most places/people pick a framework based upon the technology they already have or their language of preference.

At this point most mature frameworks all have the same abilities. The only differences you might see are speed, and even then, most people don't take that into account.

Pick the language you like or know the best, and have at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I am going to take RoR(Ruby on Rails) as it seems kind of magic to me :)

</comment></comment><comment> Johan-bjareholt There is no best.

What I would recommend though is creating a webpage that is static and gets updated dynamically with angular/react/vue with a rest server like tomcat/flask/express with the database of your choise.

When i first found angular i loved it, I never really given react a fair chance and i have recently started to use vue.js which is great.

As a rest server i am using flask with flask-restplus because its simple and i like python.

As a database i use MongoDB because its easy to set up, i'm sure there's better alternatives but i don't runt anything on a bigger scale so I havn't put much thought into it.

<comment><USER5> I think there is no best, but there are technologies you want to avoid.

Like my lastest rant will be against Angular. First load is usually with ugly {BLABLA} everywhere, last version breaks everything, ugly performance compared to vanilla JS or react, unnecessary complicated, academic mindset...

<comment> un-devmox > ugly {BLABLA} everywhere

It's been a while since I used angular (1.4) but from what I remember, ng- cloak handles this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Years ago I learned to code in PHP/MySQL, never really using a framework. I made some attempts to use CakePHP and Symfony but never liked them much.

When I wanted to build my first big project, I looked for something like Rails in PHP but couldn't find anything. I did find Django, though, which looked cool. Since Python was more similar to PHP than Ruby, I learned Python and used Django.

Eventually I found Django too heavyweight and "batteries included" for what I wanted, so I moved to Flask.

Flask is awesome and if you like Python I still recommend it. But I think it gives you too much flexibility and there are too many ways to do one thing. Also, Python does not strike me as a language well suited to the web, primarily because everything is synchronous.

I'm now building a web app with expressjs, which has all the benefits of flask (minimal, include modules as you need them) with better defined best-practices and a larger ecosystem.

I'm using parse-server as the backend. At first I hated parse because of vendor lock-in, but now that parse-server is open source, that argument is moot. Installing it on my own server is very easy.

The best benefit of using parse-server is how easy it makes building components in different languages. Because there is a parse client library in almost every language, you can write each component of a project in the language best suited to do the job.

For example, the web app I'm building is an express server that talks to parse. But the billing and invoicing portions of the code, which happen mostly in background jobs, are all Python. They talk to the _same_ parse backend as the web app, complete with all the beforeSave/afterSave triggers and cloud code functions.

Building the web app has been very fast because of built in functionality of parse server like email confirmation, forgot password, etc.

Building the billing code has been enjoyable because I'm more comfortable with Python, and I can offload any consistency worries into beforeSave/afterSave triggers and cloud code functions. This way the web app and Python code can call the same logic.

Having used many others, I would highly recommend this approach.

<comment><USER7> I spent nearly 15 minutes on the parse website but still can't figure out what it does. All I see is that it's an open source version of the Parse API. But what is the Parse API?

Since you've used it before, would you care to elaborate on what the Parse API does?

<comment><USER6> They were originally "backend as a service," basically a smart layer over mongo. They charged pretty obscene rates per request, but now it's all open source so no worries about that.

They provide a nice dashboard for creating Mongo collections (which they call Classes).

You write "cloud code" in JavaScript. You can write beforeSave and afterSave functions which are triggered before/after you save a document. You can also write "cloud functions" which execute within parse-server and interact with the database.

The result of this is that you can perform a lot of heavy lifting and consistency logic in one place, "the cloud." That way you can build clients in multiple languages (like an iOS app, Android app, web app) that only need to worry about their platform specific details.

Their original value prop was for building mobile apps, but since the ecosystem is pretty mature with a client in every language, I find the benefits extend to writing multiple clients for any purpose.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious: did you consider using Flask as a back-end, instead of parse- server? Is parse-server just easier than coding your own API back-end with Flask and whichever db you like?

<comment><USER6> No. That would effectively mean reimplementing all the logic of parse-server in flask. And when I was done doing that, I wouldn't have a client library in every language ready to interact with my backend.

Parse-server is definitely a faster way to start because it's already an API layer in front of the database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to do real time, give a shot also to Elixir/Phoenix.

<comment><USER9> Not just real time Phoenix with Elixir is the most exciting framework for me today. Its what RoR was 10 years back. Developer happiness complemented with crazy fast response times.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, anything performance sensitive - and a lot of apps are - is worth the shot.

At the same time, you have to be aware the ecosystem is far from being mature. I am trying right now to use MongoDB and the last Ecto adapter seems to not be compatible with the other libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is what I settled with for my website after trying a few things over the years. In the process I have discarded nodejs, JAX-RS, maven, Undertow, JQuery, bootstrap (partially) etc.

Currently, pure java servlets serve json over REST-like API. The jar dependencies are servlet-api.jar, a couple of json-related jars and an sqlite jar. Multiple fine-grained sqlite files for data. Tomcat as the servlet container with no static content.

A nodejs reverse proxy forks the API and static web requests between tomcat and another nodejs static webserver. The static content is angualrjs + html + css with minimal and reusable js files mostly fetching json data. I also have a little bootstrap dependency for forms.

I have an apache ant build file that copies the ~60kb war file and static content directly to the production from my dev system. Tried maven before but Ant seemed much simpler and more than enough for my needs. The ant build does a lot other things also.

I use Eclipse for the easy navigability across the code and other nice refactoring features. Ant does all the build work.

Earlier I tried pure nodejs (no java), then JAX-RS and then Undertow container etc. Nothing seemed simpler than the current setup. By the way, the site is [https://worktheme.com](https://worktheme.com)

<comment><USER11> > A nodejs reverse proxy forks the API and static web requests between tomcat > and another nodejs static webserver.

Just curious why you don't use nginx here. It will serve static files and proxy to the API. I'm sure the nodejs proxy was easy enough, but adding in gzipping files, rewrite rules, SSL, etc and it seems like nginx would even end up being more simple.

<comment><USER10> NodeJS rev proxy allows custom logic after intercepting requests - all in javascript. Not sure if NGinx would allow that. But yes, I would probably move to Nginx in near future for its tomcat-like robustness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What would you like to make? They are all ok and can do whatever the other ones can.

A lot of people choose based on their primary preferred language, so if someone likes PHP they might use Laravel, if someone wants their stuff to be in Python they might use Django or Flask.

Go's ecosystem is not as mature yet and you'll have a harder time finding relevant resources or libraries.

Nowadays I prefer Javascript/React stuff because you can make much more "responsive" and nicer UI/UX with that setup as opposed to the way all those other frameworks work which is to push html back to the client that you "enhance" with some javascript.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you just want to get up and running quickly and get normal stuff done easily go with RoR or Django (depending on if you prefer Ruby or Python as a language)

If you want to learn something 'new', exciting and interesting and put yourself ahead of the pack of where web development might be heading, go with Elixir/Phoenix. That's what I'm currently doing anyway.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My programming background : I spent 2 years on C/C++ (university) and Java quite lot time on that too, Rails ( which I'm currently learning ) and AngularJS.

What I'm planing to make is a website where people could share their ideas and consult relating to their ideas. ( Actually much of the process will be like Stackoverflow with some major enhancements )

</comment><comment><USER8> Your question would be easier to answer if you were to share something about your programming background, and your objectives.

e.g. how experienced are you, which languages do you use already, if any, and what do you want to do (get a job, build a particular thing, build multiple CRUD sites, ...)

<comment><USER14> I just got out of my degree and have the exact same problem. I was thinking in getting a full-time RoR + react job because that's what many startups are using. However, I don't know the exact reasons they use it besides the large community. It's hard to make a framework choice without knowing what are the parameters to be considered when you have zero experience.

<comment><USER8> It's not clear to me what questions you're asking. I've re-read your comment several times, and I _think_ you're asking one of the following:

A) Which web framework (e.g. Rails, Django, ...) should I spend time learning on my own, because it will help me get my first job after my degree?

B) Which full web stacks, including front-end (e.g. React or Angular) and back-end (e.g. Rails or Django) are popular among my potential employers, and why?

Is it A or B, or something else?

Also:

\- What is your level of experience in programming? Zero? Some projects as a minor during your degree? Several years writing your own pet projects?

\- What language(s) do you already use?

In choosing a framework to learn, you're not making a lifelong commitment. If you intend to be a professional developer for the next 40 years, I doubt you'll use the same framework or type of language for the whole time.

The most important thing is to pick something which allows you to be productive early on. That will help provide motivation to keep at it, to learn more, and to get better.

If you are starting out, then trying to learn Rails and React at the same time seems like a steep path. Unless you have a lot of concentrated time, you might be better off learning one at a time. If you pick React first, then build a React app that consumes some existing APIs. If you pick Rails first, then build server-rendered sites first. Then learn to present the same content via APIs. Then add React.

<comment><USER14> EXPERIENCE:

Yeah, some programming experience with: Java, C, C++, python, javascript, ruby and php. I have build some simple android and desktop apps. Nothing production quality.

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

CHOOSING A FRAMEWORK:

These are some things I have been considering (the list falls short):

-Does it attract good developers? is the community large enough?

-Fast prototyping.

-How will it handle scaling issues? new features?

-Are companies moving away from it? why?

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

JOB:

Anything that uses the framework I pick. I was thinking RoR/React but it's just a thought.

<comment><USER8> Picking a framework to get started isn't a lifelong commitment. So trying to optimise for these 5 factors (the 4 you listed, plus being able to get a job) at the same time is overkill, and unlikely to result in a better decision.

Just pick one. You will not regret starting with Rails or Django, providing you put in sustained effort to learn best practices.

Re: 'fast prototyping', the RoR+React combo won't give you that. De-coupling the front-end and back-end of your code has many advantages, but fast prototyping is not one of them. Particularly as you'll be learning as you go, with two different languages (Ruby and JS) and two frameworks, you'll spend twice as much time stuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For the JVM -> Play is excellent, especially with Scala.

For Ruby -> Rails

For JavaScript -> Node.js/Meteor (Quick dirty demos)

For Python -> Django

</comment><comment><USER16> Which programming languages do you know?

React is the most popular clients ide framework, Rails is still the most popular serverside.

<comment><USER17> I don't think rails is the most popular worldwide. Almost certainly that is PHP. Perhaps in your circles rails is popular. I know view few rails programmers myself.

<comment><USER18> PHP isn't a framework though.

<comment><USER17> It more or less is. It's a language and a web framework. That happens to have other frameworks built on it.

<comment><USER18> Sorry for late reply but I am genuinely curious on how you think PHP is a web framework? At best you can say it has routing built in, but no one even uses just php files as they are for "routing" anymore. How else is it a web framework? Especially over other scripting languages like Ruby that have a strong focus on web dev, but are just languages?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you are starting out without experience, I would choose based on which one has the best tutorials available.

<comment><USER17> Which to me is DJango or Rails, with my vote for DJango.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would you to read this article: www.phpthewrongway.com? I hope you got some inspiration! Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER21> iOs: Swift (or React Native to use only Javascript)

Android: Kotlin (or React Native to use only Javascript)

Web app: Ruby + Rails >= Go > Python + Django > PHP + Laravel

Client-side app: React + Redux

</comment><comment><USER22> All of them are good enough. There's no best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree with you. None of them could beat one another. In fact,I believe one should learn all of them and choose to work with the one appealing to him/her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Surprised you dont mention nodejs in your picks</comment>


Disciplined People Rarely Need to Use Willpower or Self-Control - <AUTHOR> https://danielriley.blog/the-secret-of-disciplined-people/ <comment><USER2> Something about this post doesn't ADHD up...

</comment><comment><USER3> but if you want to make a habit of making good habits, you should....</comment>


Kylie Jenner, the Youngest–and Gen Z's First–Billionaire on Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-04/kylie-jenner-the-youngest-and-gen-z-s-first-billionaire-on-earth <comment><USER2> Well, I've 2 more months to be 22. The game's still on</comment>


Apple Seeking to Stimulate Mac Development With $99 Mac Dev Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/05/apple-seeking-to-stimulate-mac-development-with-99-mac-dev-program/

<comment><USER2> You don't need to pay anything to use Xcode to build and publish OS X applications. Why would this stimulate development? Why would someone say "well I wasn't going to develop this application for free but, now that they let me pay $99, I'm on board!"

I doubt that official Apple support and forums are the main thing keeping people back from developing for OS X.

<comment><USER3> They're offering a lower price membership to ADC, which previously started at $500/yr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After all the discussion on HN lately about how the iPad is bad for the future of software development, it seems good that Apple is taking steps to reduce friction for potential Mac developers.

<comment><USER5> As long as this isn't the first step toward a more iPhone-like development model for Mac.

<comment><USER6> It's funny to think about it. Apple has managed to do such a good job at building up it's own Karma, that it can release ecosystems to great fanfare using rather similar techniques that would get Microsoft nothing but jeers. An app store for the mac would be pretty horrendous, yet Apple's enthusiastic fanbase just wouldn't consider chiding them as a hole. This would sort of be RMS' worst nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most exciting aspect of this for me is that the cost is less than the traditional $129 cost of OS X upgrades. So now I can not only get my OS X upgrade for free, but I can repeated early betas legitimately.

<comment><USER8> Surely they won't continue to release final builds now the program is at $99/year?

<comment><USER9> $99/year is more than $129/2 years. Also, providing betas but not finals creates an incentive for cheapskate developers to keep using beta releases, which isn't a good thing. (Speaking from personal experience here, since I ran OS 8.5 beta for a long time.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how long it will be before they offer a combined option that includes an iPhone developer certificate and access to prerelease software on both platforms. Surely they'd want developers to feed both ecosystems by building great Mac apps that come with mobile companions.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you are buying some mac hardware, signing up to the developer program pays for itself with a hardware discount.

<comment><USER7> They've eliminated the hardware discounts from the new $99 program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If they really want to stimulate development, make it free and don't require a Mac to do the development.

Less barriers == more developers.

<comment><USER13> XCode has been free for a very long time. It is not crippled. There is no "XCode Professional". SDKs are freely available, and fully documented. No one needs to pay to develop on Mac, and a good many developers didn't bother with the previous incarnation of the Mac Developer program because it was prohibitively expensive. All it did was get you pre-releases of OS X, hardware discounts, and live technical support for the XCode toolchain.

As to supporting development on other platforms... That's just silly. Would you try to develop Win32 apps on a Linux box? Seriously?

<comment><USER14> If the OP was referring to iHandheld devices, then it makes sense for anybody but Apple to support multiple host development platforms. For example, a lot of people are crazy enough to do embedded Linux development entirely on Windows. Plus there's no native advantage anywhere, so any host CPU type is as good as any other.</comment></comment></comment>


Does power influence moral thinking? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bakadesuyo.com/does-power-influence-moral-thinking <comment><USER2> This is a puzzling result for me to read. As someone who studies international relations theory, the Realist tradition of thinkers (Machiavelli, Hobbes, E.H. Carr, Morgenthau among many others) associate power and consequentialist thinking. It was stated most clearly by Weber in the _Politics as a Vocation_ lecture, where he contrasts the ethic of responsibility (consequences) to the ethic of conviction (deontological). Weber's Realism favors an ethic of responsibility against the more idealist thinkers of politics. E.H. Carr makes a similar distinction between deontological idealism and consequentialist Realism in his classic _The Twenty Years Crisis_.

This fits in with the tradition of Realism, going back the Machiavelli, who argued against _actually_ following moral rules, but instead maintaining the _appearance_ of following moral rules. He also links power, the use of power, the gaining of power, and the maintenance of power to a willingness to abandon moral rules. It was will and _virtú_ that determined the prince's effectiveness in the face of _fortuna_.

Hobbes is probably the most interesting thinker on the topic of the link between power and morality. He makes very explicit the link between epistemology (what we can claim we know) and authority and force. In order to avoid the kind of civil wars he saw around him when writing _The Leviathan_ (the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War), he thought that the ability to make claims about truth/revelation/values/morality had to be circumscribed from the public sphere. The ability to resolve disputes about moral knowledge had to be located in a single figure, the sovereign, who possessed authority and the power to back it up. But Hobbes is not making a descriptive argument-- he's not saying that the powerful follow moral rules deontologically. He's making a normative argument--that only the powerful sovereign can make moral decisions for the public, because if _anyone_ can make deontological claims what results is the type of religious civil war that he saw all around him.

So, for most of the tradition of Western (realist) thought, the relationship between power and morality/consequences runs the opposite way. The powerful operate (or should operate) according to consequences, not to deontological rules. The idealists--the "unarmed prophets" in the words of Machiavelli-- operate on deontological rules and end up being ineffective, overthrown, or conquered.

</comment><comment><USER3> It just seems weird to correlate power with morality. Most people, powerless or not, simply like to cover their asses. The powerful simply use the best means possible for doing this which is following the rules since the law tends to be on the side of the powerful. This also makes me wonder how a mob boss fits into this scheme since such people are considered powerful by most definitions.

<comment><USER4> > Most people, powerless or not, simply like to cover their asses.

My experience is the opposite - the most effective people I know spend the least time covering their asses, and put themselves on the line the most. Most people are deathly afraid of stepping up, taking responsibility, being a decionmaker, and being the one to blame if things go wrong - thus, the people who do step up and take responsibility usually ascend to great amounts of influence and, well, "power". Time spent ass-covering is time not spent doing something more effective.

<comment><USER5> What you are saying looks to me like it fits with this remark from the article:

 _in determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the consequences. For this reason, the powerful are also more inclined to stick to the rules, irrespective of whether this has positive or negative effects, whereas the powerless are more inclined to make exceptions._

I think a more interesting question to me would be in regards to people following "internal rules" vs. "external rules". People like Jesus and Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seem to be willing to break external rules out of deference to a highly developed set of internal rules -- or, perhaps, they follow a set of rules grounded more in reality than social convention. By that I mean that things like racial discrimination aren't simply "morally wrong", they are bad thinking with negative consequences. For example, the (racial) discrimination thing: My recollection is that one of the most successful crime lords of all time was willing to work with the Irish mob, the Jewish mob, etc whereas historically the Irish mob only worked with the Irish and excluded the Jews, Italians, etc. Same for other groups: They were all quite insular. Whether you are a crime lord or a business, inclusiveness is a practical strength which gives you greater access to whomever happens to have talent. If you are the only place some people can go to get a fair shake, Bonus! -- because they will work their butts off for you and be die-hard loyalists. Not because they really give a rat's patootie about you but simply because (to quote a favorite movie line from "Other People's Money") you aren't their best friend, you're their only friend.

<comment><USER6> smart power associates with power, regardless of origin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder about the reverse causation situation as well: does rule based ethical thinking help people to gain power? Without trying to debate deontology versus consequentialism, it certainly seems that someone who can just decide things based on rules would have an easier time gaining power than someone who wastes effort considering the consequences of each action.

<comment><USER6> the ones who fortuitously choose the right rules at the right time that is,</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thinking of only using open-source in 2017. What would that mean to you? - <AUTHOR> Under the heading of "be the change you want to see in the world", I'm playing around with the idea of restricting myself to only using free and open-source software in 2017 and blogging about the experience (I know - it's already been done: http://yearofopensource.net/). As an audio/video engineer and more recently as a front-end developer, I've always been a three operating system guy (Linux for servers, Windows in the living room, and Macs for my daily driver/laptop) but recently have found myself using my Linux desktop more and the other platforms less and less.
From a practical perspective, going purely open-source would mean trading OSX for Linux, Sublime Text for Atom, Chrome for Firefox, Photoshop for Gimp, etc. All of that sounds totally doable, but the more I think about it, the trickier deciding what should count as "closed-source" gets. My iPhone is certainly closed-source, but I'm not sure it's even possible to run AOSP on any of the current batch of Android phones. Replacing my phone with a land line feels like taking too much of a step away from society. Facebook and Twitter are both closed-source platforms I could walk away from easily but again, deciding where to draw the line gets tricky. Avoiding Github and only sharing my code via a self-hosted Gitlab CE instance would seem like obeying the letter of the law but against the spirit of the experiment. Avoiding Google services would probably be the hardest but most interesting transition. (is there anyone offering a truly open-source email service? I know I could self-host, but I imagine I'd run into problems with messages being caught by spam filters.)
So I ask you all: what would going purely open-source mean to you? Where would you be willing to compromise and where would you draw the line? Do you think in 2017 it's even a reasonable thing to attempt?
Thanks! And I'm looking forward to reading your responses. <comment><USER2> I think the line should be practical. Personally, I switched to running Linux full-time about 15 years ago. Never looked back. But I still used nVidia drivers even though open source would have been preferable. Using anything else was hell, though, and investing the time I didn't think was worth it - there's a life to be lived outside of computers. These days, Intel GPUs and older Radeons have good open source support, so I use those.

I still use Skype, because that's what my (overseas) friends use. If you start going off on too much of a philosophical crusade trying to convince people to use open source tool X, more than likely I suspect most people will start thinking you've gone a little off the deep end.

For personal use, I try very hard to only use open source software, even if I know there are closed source alternatives that might be more polished / productive. (That trade-off is becoming less and less common; I find the quality of tools has improved drastically over the years.) Also, I try to contribute patches - or at least bug reports - whenever I can.

My point is, you gotta pick and choose your battles. Running an open source OS? Highly achievable. Changing the culture of the internet? Not likely.

\--- I should add, wherever you end up drawing the line, good on you for taking the jump!

</comment><comment><USER3> The most critical problem: Hacker News is closed source, right? By any definition that includes Facebook and Twitter, certainly. That'll be a tricky one to let go of.

Personally, it's always drivers etc that I find it difficult to get good open- source options for. Even if you're running Linux the open-source graphics card drivers are pretty terrible, so you take quite a performance hit if you're not prepared to include any proprietary code at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point - I remembered when Reddit open-sourced a good chunk of their codebase and had figured Hacker News and Reddit shared some of their foundations, but looking into it I appear to have been mistaken.

I think restricting myself to only open-source hardware would make something like this impossible. I don't think I'm running any proprietary drivers on my Linux desktop now, though. It's stock Xubuntu using the hdmi and vga ports built into my motherboard and I haven't had any issues with it. I don't do any gaming though - the most GPU-intensive stuff I've done on Linux is running RViz and Gazebo when I was using ROS for robotics.

<comment><USER4> I was realizing how horrible the ideology of "free software" is for a while now, especially when taken too far (for example microcode updates).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A discussion for avoiding Google's services: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298059)</comment>


PingPal ChatApp – the iPhone chat app for groups that really work - <AUTHOR> http://pingpal.io/2014/01/pingpal-chatapp-iphone/

<comment><USER2> Can you point me out what new features are you offering me with your product in comparison, for example, to WhatsApp, Line or Google hangouts?

Or, are you simply offering a new player into this market?</comment>


JavaScript News HN-style: EchoJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.echojs.com/

<comment><USER2> These clones never have any discussion. :(</comment>