A solution to the Uber and Airbnb problems that no one will like - <AUTHOR> http://www.nickgrossman.is/2015/07/23/heres-the-solution-to-the-uber-and-airbnb-problems-and-no-one-will-like-it/ <comment><USER2> Uber's problems are not Airbnb's problems, and I find this continued trend of always mentioning the two in the same breath when it comes to regulation quite baffling.

Opposition to Uber is a clear case of regulatory capture. Every negative outcome that regulation is meant to mitigate (accountability, safety, reliability, discrimination, non-predatory pricing) is _better served_ by Uber (and two-factor location tracking) than traditional cabs. I have not heard anybody raise compelling objections to Uber's model based on objective harm to consumers or market non-participants (negative externalities).

Airbnb's model, on the other hand, is rife with negative externalities. The most significant of these are the degradation of communities that were never meant to accommodate de facto hotels (noise, parking, transient traffic), and the drying up of affordable housing stock for people who actually intend to live in the homes they purchase.

<comment><USER3> Sorry but there a bunch of reasons to dislike Uber, from how they use the information they gather of you and your location, to all price manipulation it does with surge pricing.

Surge pricing is so intransparent that Im 100% sure that has been gamed against the consumer and the drivers in favor of Uber. Not only that, Uber doesnt tell you how much it costs while its going which is also a huge disadvantage for the consumer. Who knows what happens between what you paid to Uber and what the driver received?

<comment><USER4> Wait, what? I don't want to have a flamewar over Uber here, but most of this isn't even a little bit true:

 _> surge pricing is so intransparent that Im 100% sure that has been gamed against the consumer and drivers in favor of Uber_

I guess this isn't "false" since you're just stating your belief, but if it's totally opaque to you, then how can you be so sure? I mean, OK, I guess, but... [citation needed].

 _> Uber doesn't tell you how much it costs_

What? Yes it does - it tells you up front the multiple you'll pay, and even makes you manually type it in to confirm before your ride is started.

 _> Who knows what happens between what you paid to Uber and what the driver received?_

The driver gets the same 80% that they get during non-surge times. That's why surge pricing works: it summons more drivers to the street by paying them more.

This is all very publicly known stuff; I don't understand your complaints here. By all means, don't ride it if you don't like it, and criticism is fair game, but try to get the basic facts straight.

<comment><USER3> > I guess this isn't "false" since you're just stating your belief, but if > it's totally opaque to you, then how can you be so sure? I mean, OK, I > guess, but... [citation needed].

You really think a for-profit company that doesn't have to or doesn't disclose the process to do surge pricing, having the knowledge and capacity to use surge pricing to maximize profit, will sacrifice profits in favour of the consumer?

Its opaque on Uber/Lyft, it's not opaque on taxis, so thats definitely a reason to dislike Uber(Sidecar does disclose prices before you get on the car)

> What? Yes it does - it tells you up front the multiple you'll pay, and even > makes you manually type it in to confirm before your ride is started.

A multiple is not the same as the number you are going to pay. A multiple of what? I don't see a ticker like I do in a cab that tells me they are not gaming the numbers.

You say the driver gets the same 80%, but I dont know how much it cost me until I'm out of the car. If Uber tells me it cost me 10 dollars, and tells the driver that trip was billed 8 dollars for him, I would never know, and neither would the driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a nonstarter for Airbnb because if they gave the type of data suggested here you'd be able to extremely easily analyze it and find all the places where illegal sublets were happening, which is a major part of their business. There is no way around Airbnb's problems without changing zoning legislation.

<comment><USER6> What percentage of units on Airbnb do you think are actually illegal sublets?

<comment><USER7> [http://nypost.com/2014/04/21/two-thirds-of-citys-airbnb- rent...](http://nypost.com/2014/04/21/two-thirds-of-citys-airbnb-rentals-are- illegal-apartments-state/)

> Nearly two-thirds of the city apartments recently listed on Airbnb were > being offered in violation of the law, an analysis by state authorities has > found.

> The study of data from the subletting service's own Web site showed 64 > percent of its 19,500-plus offerings for Jan. 31 covered an "entire > apartment," says an affidavit from the state Attorney General's Office.

There is no way to really know without being AirBnb + knowing which apartment complexes sublet illegally.

But...at least in NYC, 64%.

<comment><USER5> Yep. And then you need to multiply that by the fact that most of their business undoubtedly comes from major metro areas, in which almost all have laws which make AirBnB illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This essay has some interesting analysis contrasting the differences between the model of licensing/guild vs crowdsourced reviews.

However, analyzing that aspect misses the point.

The heated issues around Uber is _economics_ and how the pieces of the pie are cut up. Explaining how new technologies allow a different trust model to emerge is _irrelevant to the French taxi driver throwing bricks at Uber cars_ or _DiBlasio 's proposed cap to curb congestion_.

In other words, this essay is more relevant to a _potential passenger_ of Uber who wonders how he/she can _trust_ a car that doesn't have a government medallion.

One needs to write a totally different type of essay to appeal to angry taxi drivers and angry politicians.

<comment><USER9> (author of the post here)

There are issues on a number of levels. One is "public safety" which is essentially the licensing issue. Another is externalities like traffic, which aren't about licensing for safety but more about regulating for other impacts. Then, there are the economic / labor issues, which deserve their own consideration.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I agree with that and also the analysis in your essay.

My point is that your content (though intersting) does not live up to your ambitious (and generic) title, " _A Solution to the Uber Problems_ ".

Talking about "real time data sharing" with mayor of NYC is interesting but the "congestion" problem, which could be perceived or real, is not what comes to mind when people discuss "Uber problems." Traffic congestion caused by Uber is a relatively minor debate so far in relation to other problems it has.

The following google search for "Uber congestion" is 504,000 hits:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+congestion](https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+congestion)

The following searc for "Uber labor" is 11,100,000 hits:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+labor](https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+labor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little confused here. The article says Uber and Airbnb are quite effectively regulating themselves, and never bothers explaining why they're a problem.

<comment><USER11> I think he means they're good at regulating problems that affect them directly but they're bad at/don't care about regulating externalities. There are laws in place to protect people who stay in hotels and AirBNB does a good job of emulating those, but there are also laws to prevent hotels from messing up society as a whole (e.g. zoning laws) that AirBNB doesn't emulate well or at all.

<comment><USER12> Right, the regulations are meant to protect both the parties to the economic activity and people who aren't parties. The Uber equivalent, I guess, would be that their system can eliminate drivers passengers don't like, and passengers drivers don't like, but they have no incentive (except bad PR) to make sure, for example, that drivers not carrying customers are properly insured should they hit pedestrians. The self-regulatory mechanisms don't give the pedestrians or other non-parties a lever to advocate on their own behalf.

<comment><USER10> It looks like the insurance issue is already being solved: [https://www.policygenius.com/blog/uber-lyft-and-other- ridesh...](https://www.policygenius.com/blog/uber-lyft-and-other-rideshare- drivers-now-have-insurance-options/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ahh, yes, the Randian ideology of the self-regulating data-driven, no-bullshit enterprise, because governments are Big and Bad and will stifle the hardworking man in their attempts to do right for society.

<comment><USER14> Did you read the article? It's not about self-regulation. It's about government regulation based on real-time data provided by private enterprise.

<comment><USER13> Yes. There's no way a data-driven company would give out its crown jewels for regulation just like that. Hell if I had a data-driven company I would definitely not trust anyone with the secrecy of said data. And the receiving end of said data should have little reason to trust me either.

I think governments still have a _lot_ to do as far as taking decisions based on collected data. However, we're slowly getting there. But the politics surrounding the data will still be around forever.

<comment><USER9> The trick to releasing data is to provide the right incentives.

For example, relaxing the traditional regulation in exchange for data.

Or, releasing the platforms for some types of intermediary liability in exchange for the data

Agree that absent of a proper incentive there's no way this could come about

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I can see why no one would like this sort of regulatory scheme as it would put everyone's relevant data in the open. Everyone would be able to look at it whether you're the affected company or not. Effectively, it gives more data to competitors to figure out where a market is being underserved or underdeveloped which would mean existing firms would have to deal with potential losses of economic profit. Honestly, I prefer this approach despite being an anti-capitalist. This approach could be part of the solution to cure the inequities of capitalism.

<comment><USER15> Hm, why would that be necessary? Are there reasons such an ideal wouldn't just create one-to-one channels with individual companies providing data directly to regulators? Perhaps this article oversimplifies, it's not something I've ever thought about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > 2) In exchange for that freedom to operate, companies will need to share > data with regulators — un-massaged, and in real time, just like their users > do with them. AND, will need to accept that that data may result in forms of > accountability. Just like user data informs accountability measures within > their platforms:

The problem with this is it imagines a world where the regulators don't need to perform any kind of audit/inspection.

The reality is, companies cut corners which will cause bugs and "bugs" in the data transfer process. The only way for a regulator to discover these issues is....to do what they do now.

It also ignores the fact that companies like Amazon _explicitly tell people who interact with the reporting portion of their MWS business that they cannot report information in real time_. And I'm pretty sure that is due to costs. This regulatory model would likely increase compliance costs for businesses with delayed reporting mechanisms because they don't need to guarantee processing in real time. The same is true of numerous companies I deal with at #DayJob. There are numerous remote sites with low bandwidth connections including _in other countries_ that regularly have replication delays for reporting purposes.

There are soooooo many holes that are going to require the "expensive" part of regulation (boots on the ground to inspect/examine) to continue to operate the "old" way anyway.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can we stop referring to business models which choose to simply skirt or ignore the law as "innovation"? I'm pretty sure the Mafia has been doing that for decades.

<comment><USER9> (author of the post here)

Sure, that's true

But what's also true is that we will continue to see things -- things that are perfectly acceptable to society, or at least will come to be that way -- that are out of sync with current laws and regulations. So the question is how do we get there. Clearly every innovation is not positive, but many are, and we want to give ourselves the opportunity to try things and learn from them.

<comment><USER16> As I said in another post, most of these things are not new. They've been done. Maybe not "on a computer" or "with an app", but they've been done, and are the reason why the regulations were enacted. The startup that tried to sell parking spaces was one such example. There were regulations on the books making it illegal to sell a public parking space for a long, long time. Why? Because someone tried to do it before, and it was decided that it should not be allowed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Polymet is about to get permission to open one of the first copper sulfide mines in Minnesota. This mine will be directly over the Superior Watershed, one of the largest fresh water aquifers in the world.

We have _plenty_ of data about how destructive copper sulfide mining is yet it looks like it will get rammed through. So the idea that "asking permission" is a thing, well, I'm not sure it really is anymore.

<comment><USER18> _> So the idea that "asking permission" is a thing, well, I'm not sure it really is anymore._

Oh I'm sure it still is. You just have to ask very, very, very nicely (with campaign contributions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The solution seems to gloss over the fact that these businesses (with their relaxed licensing requirements and greater freedom to operate) would have to build a real-time government data sharing system before they could operate. Sounds almost like a way to keep smaller competitors out of the market via onerous regulatory requirements, almost the opposite of the stated goal.

</comment><comment><USER20> One step towards the proposed idea would be for a tech-savvy government to build a platform and offer APIs. Just imagine: an API to file your tax return, to vote, to register marriage, to open a business, to register a child, to get government statistics generated from all this data and of course an API to authenticate.

</comment><comment><USER16> "I am not sure there's a near term alternative to this process — new ways of doing things will never see the light of day if step 1 is always "ask permission". The answer will nearly always be no, and new ideas won't have a chance to prove themselves."

Usually the regulations are in place for a reason. Someone has already tried those things. Maybe not "on the internet" or "with an app", but they've been done. Trying to skirt lodging and rental regulation by using your apartments as hotel rooms, bypassing both hotel taxes and rent control is not new.

</comment><comment><USER21> This doesn't actually solve the problems.

Businesses have used real-time data for decades to optimize their processes, and that's all we're seeing referenced in this post. Setting aside the question of whether Uber drivers are "employees," they are certainly inside the business model, and so is the data about their performance.

But the reasons we have regulations is that business optimizations can be counter to social goals. And knowing about a bad thing doesn't allow one to go back in time and fix it.

</comment><comment><USER22> This article makes an assumption that regulation is a tool used to protect consumers. While the rhetoric may be to make it sound that way, most regulation exists to protect incumbents who stand to lose money. This is just how governments have always worked; which is why driving accountability in government is so hard.

<comment><USER23> When incumbents have invested capital specifically to comply with regulations, it makes sense that the incumbents will demand that the regulations are applied equitably.

Regulators tend to be held highly accountable to the community they regulate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see a clear idea in those graphics. What are they telling?

<comment><USER18> The graphics should have been split in half. The left half is the pre-approval process and the right half is the post-approval process. The two halves compare the relative differences in the compliance burden in the two models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If these companies are going to flout regulation anyway, what's the point of making regulation more permissive?</comment>


Show HN: Poor Person's Bitly with GitHub Pages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sricola/sri.fyi <comment><USER2> This is awesome. It's actually timely as i was looking at building something for an app. But I think I might use this.

Would be cool to have endpoints that updates the csv file. Or updating the location of the csv to a private location.

Very cool indeed though! Nice work.</comment>


Nasa Uses Sanskrit To Program Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html <comment><USER2> Inaccurate title. This isn't about Sanskrit, it's about certain schools of pre-modern Indian linguistics (which are very interesting and worthy subjects). Sanskrit is a beautiful language with an incredible literary canon, but there's nothing special about it that makes it stand apart from any other human language. Any other old Indo-European language possesses the same properties. Regrettably, Hindutva activists and their Western sycophants talk it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is attributed to a 1985 writing by the (obscure) author named in the post here in many other online copy-and-paste postings of this same story. By now, there should be some follow-up on this, including identifying who "Rick Briggs" really is (just an imaginary character in an urban legend, or a real person from decades ago?) and what further artificial intelligence research has found out about various human languages.

By coincidence, I was just looking up reviews of the excellent book Mathematics in India by Kim Plofker,

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691120676](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691120676)

which I read a few years ago, just before I saw this post. There has been a lot of new scholarship about ancient India both in India and around the world since this submitted article was supposedly originally written, and here on Hacker NEWS we should be looking at more up-to-date information, I think.

<comment><USER2> It appears to be the case that the attribution at the bottom of the page is accurate.

[http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/46...](http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/466/402)</comment></comment>


WebRTC - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/webrtc/

<comment><USER2> Google is simply blowing me away right now. They seem to have their hands into everything. I'm so curious to know if this business strategy will work. Then Google+ comes along and takes what initially appeared to be separate ventures and combines them into one. Then I read about WebRTC and I can't help but get very excited....and it's open source! What am I going to read next? Headline, Google intern cures cancer over the weekend.

<comment><USER3> The near simultaneous release of all this is also amazing. Launching one or two things, and making sure it doesn't break the entire infrastructure is hard enough under good circumstances. Rewriting pretty much everything at something the size of Google really is astounding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this subtle jab at JavaScript developers: "...programming skills are required. However, usage of the Javascript APIs that call WebRTC in the browsers will only require typical web development skills."

<comment><USER5> Yes in today's world, I think it's a bit poor. I write a lot of javascript, c# (software) and php. There is nothing 'easier' about javascript. In fact, VS2010 being so good at debugging and with Resharper, developing javascript can be harder! The "WTF" factor goes up 10 folds. (I've only got praises for webkit's inspector/debugger though!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just to make it clear - WebRTC is at least 6-12 months away from being usable in any browser.

The first part has just landed in Chrome[1].

This isn't exposed to the browser in anyway yet, so the APIs need to be agreed on, build and released.

Even in Chrome, the best case for that is months, and that is for the unstable stream.

If you want to build cross-browser applications, hopefully WebRTC will be released as a plug-in. It is unlikely that will happen any quicker than Chrome integration though.

[1] [https://sites.google.com/site/webrtc/blog/firststeptowardchr...](https://sites.google.com/site/webrtc/blog/firststeptowardchromeintegration)

</comment><comment><USER7> It does not seem all that impossible now, now that Skype has been integrated into Facebook. From what I hear, they have stripped down most of skype and provided javascript apis for the facebook web app.

Before that, I always used to wonder how could one take all of signaling protocol (like the monstrous SIP, XMPP etc) and media (RTP) and cram all of it into the browser.

<comment><USER8> Pretty different boats. Facebook/Skype requires a separate binary installation. Google Talk/Hangouts/etc currently requires Google's "Voice and Video plugin", which at least just integrates into Chrome rather than installing separate executables, but for the sake of this discussion, they're functionally equivalent.

Packing the necessary tools into a toolkit that a browser can utilize first- rate is, as you pointed out, a different challenge. Not sure what SIP or XMPP are "monstrous" though.

<comment><USER7> Different boats, I agree. Skype is an additional plugin I think, so you don't need to have skype installed on your device. But that's the whole point. Google is the new Microsoft, though probably not as much evil. They have wide interests in almost all areas from search engine, android, chrome os, social, browser etc. So they can really control and push what fits their needs.

Tomorrow if Facebook comes out with their own browser, they would surely push skype baked in, into the browser rather than make it an additional installation.

When I mentioned the word "monstrous", I meant that in terms of the implementation and code size. I am not sure of XMPP, but SIP I think is. There are tons of new rfcs, specs and drafts that have come up which one has to implement for effective interoperable SIP sessions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone please help me understand better what this actually means as a benefit for us? Does WebRTC in the browser mean i'll be able to do away with my asterisk server eventually should i choose to, and develop my own solution that works just in the browser, or am i way off track here?

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds good. Hope all the browsers (esp IE) add support for it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how it compares with Flotype's[1] Now: <https://github.com/Flotype/now>

[1] YC W2011

<comment><USER12> I fail to see any comparison here.

WebRTC is a project building support for things like P2P and Device API support into modern browsers. This is so you could do things such as access a user's video camera through the Device API and establish a P2P stream with another browser, without using any Flash or installable plugins.

Now is just a JavaScript library that enables you to do RPC with browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2678914></comment>


JTV Tech Talk: Jans Aasman on "How Lisp will make Web 3.0 a reality" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.justin.tv/2008/02/jtv-tech-talk-jans-aasman-on-how-lisp.html

<comment><USER2> Damn - I'm going to have to cancel some appointments to make this. An impressive speaker and topic - Mike (cofounder) and I are looking forward to it. :)

I must admit to being a bit skeptical about the semantic web in general though.

<comment><USER3> I'm "researching"/teaching myself knowledge representation and knowledge management at the moment. I read a lot about the Semantic Web and how it will be the most wonderful thing, but I suspect that we will just end up with "tag soup".

<comment><USER2> The only way to make it work is to have a computer model that represents human concepts (this was why we started our company actually) None of the current representation schemas do the job, so unless someone comes up with a new model, the power of the programming language you use won't help much. I think with the right model, though, deploying in Lisp could be pretty powerful. It requires serious epistemology work and also logic. I think Fred Sommers has the right logic for the job, but the conceptual model is still needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> whose reality?</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you think SRTP/ZRTP usage is not more widespread? - <AUTHOR>

In light of various eavesdropping activities by various organizations, one would think there would be a much stronger push to adopt and utilize SRTP/ZRTP for VoIP much like how SSL is slowly getting cleaned up. But I'm not seeing much activity in this space and do not know if it's a lack of concern or knowledge or both? <comment><USER2> I recently looked at providers. For wider adoption, it would be good to use a ZRTP service to contact normal phones (PSTN).

Silent Circle actually does this: [https://silentcircle.com/services](https://silentcircle.com/services)

Unfortunately the monthly cost on top of a normal phone contract it too high for a lot of people (me included). Ideally, it should be as cheap and easy as Skype and then the crowds will follow.

</comment><comment><USER3> SRTP is intercepted so really not important protocol. Silent Circles products are ALL backdoor, so it is a zero security product. If you want a real good method, code your own or use opensource protocols

<comment><AUTHOR> Source on Silent Circle being backdoored?

<comment><USER3> Send me your email so i send you the details. Stay away from silent circle, else ALL your conversations could be listen and saved and recorded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try email@example.com</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My company sold for $100M and I got Zilch. How can that be? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thresholdvc/77790e5c2d4d <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21358531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21358531)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, this wasn't written by me, it's just an interesting read I found.</comment>


Ask HN: HOW did YOU learn to program? - <AUTHOR>

Did you read a book? If so, which?
Pick it up as you went?
Another way? Do tell. <comment><USER3> A combination of ways, spread over many years. And I'm not done learning, so there almost isn't an answer to this question. But to try to hit the highpoints:

1\. I bought a copy of Herbert Schildt's "Teach Yourself C" about 1993/1994 or so. Downloaded a shareware C compiler from a BBS and just started writing code.

2\. Bought more books on C, C++. Upgraded to Borland Turbo C++ and started writing C++ code. Toyed with writing hobby projects like a D&D character generator, but mostly just worked through examples in the books.

3\. Took an "intro to programming logic" class in college.

4\. Graduated from the community college and transferred to UNC-W as a CS major. Took "Intro to Pascal Programming" and "Intro to C Programming" and an Assembler course during my first semester or two.

5\. Kept studying C and C++ in my spare time, even after dropping out of school. Started dabbling with different libraries like OWL and MFC. Learned some Borland Paradox.

6\. Dabbled a bit with other languages for kicks... downloaded freeware or open-source compilers and did at least "hello, world" in all sorts of obscure languages.

7\. Went back to the community college to do a degree in computer programming. Took two semesters of C++ and two semesters of RPG/400 plus some other interesting stuff.

7.5 about 1998 or so, started dabbling with Java just a little, but wasn't sold on it.

8\. By 2000 I was a modestly competent C/C++ programmer, but with no real world experience and no undergrad degree. But thanks to the dot-com bubble, I was able to get a job as a programmer anyway, once I left the confines of Hicksville and moved to the RTP area.

9\. Spent a year or two doing mostly C and C++ and Visual Basic development. Transferred to a different community college to finish the A.S degree I'd dropped out of to move to RTP in 2000. Took two semesters of Java, a semester long class on Enterprise Java, a semester long class on JMS, two semesters of Visual Basic, two semesters of Oracle Pl/SQL and some other stuff I forget now.

9.5 By now I'm writing Java almost exclusively at my day job, developing web- based e-commerce systems.

10\. Graduated, went back to that same school to do an A.S. in High Performance Computing. Started my first open source project somewhere in this timeframe. Took 3-4 semesters of classes on MPI programming, OpenMP programming, HPC security, Beowulf Cluster building, an Operating Systems class, etc.

11\. graduated, kept working mostly in Java. Have worked mostly in Java ever since, with the exception of a stint at Lulu where I wrote mostly PHP and Python.

12\. Started another open source project somewhere back around 2006. Mixed in with all of this going back to the late 90's, BTW, is an interest and association with open-source, including building Mozilla (Mozilla, mind you, not Firefox) from source and reading over it's source, trying to understand it. Tinkered with OpenOffice and some other random crap here and there as well.

12.5 Gave some talks on various topics at the local Java User's Group, Linux User's Group, etc.

13\. About a year ago, launched the open-source project that I'm hoping to build a startup around. This time it's built in Groovy and I'm moving more and more towards Groovy, while still writing Java at my $DAYJOB.

14\. Organize the TriJVM Hack Night meetup, where various people get together to hack on various "stuff" in any of the many JVM languages. I usually use the Hack Nights as an opportunity to spend a couple of hours working on Scala or Clojure. I'm really starting to get into Clojure.

15\. Started writing overly long and detailed answers to questions on HN when I could be coding. Shame on me.

As far as books go, there have been many over the years, but I always got a lot of mileage out of those "Dietel and Dietel" books. People seem to either love those or hate them, but they seemed pretty good to me. Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in C++" was a good one as well. The Robert Sedgewick books are good for algorithms stuff. I own a copy of SICP, but still haven't gotten around to working through it. But I will, one day... yes, one day I will. After that I'll tackle TAOCP (if I live long enough!)

There are all sorts of opportunities and avenues to learn, so just take advantage. I also forgot to mention going to Users Group meetings (as an attendee) and I learned a lot from many Tri-JUG meetings or Tri-LUG meetings (among others.) And of course there are tons of videos and great lectures up on on Youtube and other sites. Lately I've been going through that Stanford/Google one on Data Mining and reading the Head First Statistics book.

If there's a point to all this, I'd say it's "Just keep learning."

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't quite know how I learned to program. I was very young when I first started using Commodore BASIC on the PET. I remember learning BASIC before I had a computer of my own. I would write programs at home, then type them up at school on a BBC Micro.

I remember using the back of the manual for my friend's ZX Spectrum to learn how to write machine code (effectively in the form of poking bytes directly read from DATA statements, then saving the code out to tape). I wrote a tool to dump out the bytes from code I loaded - in effect using it as a disassembler. I actually cracked the Elite loader for Scooby Doo this way and found hidden messages in there.

Later my parents finally caved in and got me a Multiface 1 after I had my own spectrum, and I started cracking games, writing pokes for kids at school.

I eventually moved to an Amiga and picked up AMOS as I hated GW-BASIC. It was there I first tried Emacs, but preferred MicroEmacs. I learned enough 68k assembler to crack a few games using a friend's borrowed Action Replay but never had my own so didn't get enough time with it to do much. I wrote a few demos for the Amiga, but they weren't widely released (with me living in rural England with no direct BBS access anymore it wasn't like I could upload a DMS file somewhere), although some went around the local schools, colleges and towns.

I also wrote games for the Archimedes and Amiga. When I got a PC I started writing for that too. Eventually I got an Internet connection of my own. I hated the PC, wanted my miggy back but Commodore was long gone and this was the future. I eventually installed this new fangled Linux thing and it came with free compilers - sweet! Over the space of a few weeks I learnt how syscalls worked, how memory management worked and eventually started writing shellcode, then exploit code and tools. After I got married I started dropping off a bit, but I'm amazed at how many languages I can program in (I have no idea how many, but it's a lot), not including the dead ones.

So my general way of learning was reverse engineering the language (because I generally lacked documentation) but slowly became more along the lines of reading books, tutorials, and picking things up as I got access to the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER5> Started with making text adventure games on my TI-83 calc back in freshman year of HS. I was curious as to how games worked and wanted to make my own.

After that, I took a programming class (the first one my HS offered) in Java. It was fun. By the end, I had made a tic tac toe game, a game of hangman, and a couple other smaller projects (was only a semester).

Then, since my school didn't offer any other programming classes, I took an independent study so I could work on learning C++. I didn't get too far with it because there was no structure to it (I used the book and tried to make cool games that often didn't go very far) and I didn't have anyone supervising me that knew C++ or OOP (the guy who sat in the room with me during the study only knew Visual Basic and wasn't a great programmer at all). I did end up making a program to solve limits and basic derivatives of functions for my Calculus II class, though. That was helpful.

From there, I went off to college and started a software engineering degree.

</comment><comment><USER6> I originally "learned" when I was a kid by watching my dad do his college homework in his office and asking ?'s. I was homeschooled, so he took this as an opportunity to explain how things work, what a compiler did, etc. I remember telling him that object oriented programming seemed "stupid" because it's redundant if you have to program everything to do the same exact task (e.g. programming each item in your house to pick itself up). I really enjoyed it and I think he did too because he spent most of my life telling me I'd be great if I chose to work with computers.

However, I stopped soon after he graduated college in '89 and moved onto other pursuits because I "knew better". I was about 22 when I started taking CS courses in college, so in a sense that's my "real" learning to program moment, but it's FAR from my first introduction to programming.

</comment><comment><USER7> At age 17 in 1978 our local Tandy (Radio Shack) had a TRS-80. I managed to find out how to list the program that was running, read the (minimal/inadequate) "manual" and started to modify the existing programs.

I purchased a Model I (16KB) and started to run things in BASIC for real, and got seriously fed up with the (lack of) speed. I somehow, somewhere got a Z80 book and started to write code in assembly. That was too slow, so I wrote a compiler.

That way I learned both BASIC and Z80, pretty much entirely self-taught from books that didn't really have much. I might still have them somewhere - <USER2> should try to dig them out. I certainly still have the TRS-80, and its schematics. I've been trying to work out if I should replace the dud AND gate that corrupts data when it reads from the screen memory.

</comment><comment><USER8> I started with Basic on a C-64 when I was a kid, mainly using the official manual if I remember right. When I went on to the Amiga, I didn't code anything for a few years and eventually wrote some extensions for bulletin board systems such as AmiExpress and CNet.

On the PC I did about the same, coding add-ons for PCBoard, mainly by decompiling other add-ons and learning from them. Later on I started with C/C++ (and some x86 assembler) and that's when it started to become more serious. I got a programmer job, moved on to Java, web development and many more languages.

I wonder which language 'kids' are learning first these days though. Looking back I'd say Basic was a perfect starting point but it's pretty much gone these days, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER9> Attended a 2-month COBOL programming course while doing my graduation back in '81. Used to get (small) weekly time slots on an IBM mainframe for trials of code (written on coding sheets, punch cards and all).

Then, taught myself FORTRAN, BASIC and PASCAL by reading books from the library. 1st ever really working program I wrote was for a CASIO programmable calculator that had BASIC like programming language. Next 'upgraded' to an HP 41cv calculator. Next came a Sinclair ZX 81 followed by a TRS-80 Mod IV (128 KB) where I learnt (on my own) to write _serious_ BASIC code. C, assembly and hacking in earnest followed with my 1st IBM PC clone - a Tandy 1000 (1985).

That's it from me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Its debatable whether it counts as actual "programming", but one of my first related learning experiences was designing starcraft and warcraft 3 maps. While I almost didn't write any _code_, I nevertheless had to construct conditionals, triggers, events, loops etc through the GUI which probably helped a lot when I started actual coding during my Java class.

Plus it was so fun too - I could make something quite tangible and "braggable" (a custom game map I could play with friends) without too much difficulty and syntax overhead. Sometimes I wonder if such game map editors should be utilized more in teaching programming to students; they certainly got _me_ interested in programming.

</comment><comment><USER11> \- Intense, hands-on experimentation from age 11, starting with programmable calculators (this was in 1969).

\- Undergrad courses, including assembly language (IBM 360) and data structures/algorithms with Knuth vols 1 and 3.

\- PhD, (not much programming, but lots of fundamentals).

\- Tons of programming in industry, including several years working with people far more experienced than I was at the time.

\- Try to work like the best people you can find. I find that I was not influenced by code so much as clearly written, well-reasoned documents that boil a problem's solution down to a very clean abstraction.

<comment><USER9> > I was not influenced by code so much as clearly written, well-reasoned > documents that boil a problem's solution down to a very clean abstraction.

Hear hear. Even back in the days when the availability of coding talent was not so plentiful nor coding tools so powerful, I used to tell people that thorough _system analysis_ is a lot more important than just code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll relate as a list of steps which worked for me. BTW, I am not profit driven, but I am goal driven with self-sustainable for-profit enterprises being one of my goals.

1) Read/Skim through the iOS Development Guide 2) Start using XCode and IB via the templates 3) Build and run simple projects which solve problems in which I am interested 4) Expand simple projects to use online API's and free webservices 5) Upload to iTunes Connect 6) Profit

NOTE: I am leaving out the cost of overhead on the assumption that the scope was within the HOW problem-set excluding HOW-MUCH.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was 12 years old and wanted to play video games on our 386. However, being the typical 12 year old, I had no money. I had some cheesy little DOS helicopter game and decided that I wanted to do something like that.

I pulled up the source code to GORILLAS.BAS and played around with it for a while to learn the BASIC syntax and, instead, ended up making a silly little text mode game where the smiley face (char 0x01) had to eat the diamonds. Watch out for those flying dollar signs. They're dangerous!

</comment><comment><USER14> The thing that motivated me to really write programs on my own and experiment with them was the fact that the mIRC chat client had a built-in scripting language (a custom language, which in retrospect was a mixture of nutty and interesting). As a high school student who frequented IRC, writing some scripts for my client was a compelling use-case.

I had been briefly introduced to Logo and BASIC as a kid, though, in some sort of after-school program.

</comment><comment><USER15> I started at age 21 in my first year of university. I did 6 months introduction to C as part of my Batchelor in Mechatronic Engineering - and I was hooked from day 1 :)

</comment><comment><USER16> BASIC programming guide that shipped with Vic-20 (I was about 7).

Later on C64 BASIC books and the very cool Usborne Publishing game programming books: <http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/manuals/cats/usborne.html>

Did computer science at school and then did a 3 year degree in Information Technology.

Been coding for almost 30 years... wow

<comment><USER8> Damn, I am really curious about the contents of these 'vintage' game books now.

<comment><USER16> Check out [http://www.commodore16.com/php/images/books/downloads/Comput...](http://www.commodore16.com/php/images/books/downloads/Computer%20Battlegames.pdf)

Basically a BASIC listing that you typed in, instructions how to to tweak the app for various microcomputer flavors of BASIC and then challenges/hint of tweaks you could make to the game.

The later ones like this one [http://www.commodore16.com/php/images/books/WriteyourownAdve...](http://www.commodore16.com/php/images/books/WriteyourownAdventurePrograms.pdf) were way more in-depth

<comment><USER8> Great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started always with each language with a specific goal. With Pascal I started with a book, but every language since then, I've mostly got the basic structure down, and then used the reference for the language to find what I'm looking for. For Python, I used the main tutorial that is on their site.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was 9 and I stood in a department store in Berlin. I remember nothing interested me in this building filled with products, except a C64. Shortly after some failed attempts to type something into the interpreter, I started reading on the BASICs. From then on it was mainly read-trial-error-read.

</comment><comment><USER19> I started with QBASIC in middle school, but then picked up HTML once my family got our lightning fast 56k modem, and thus a web nerd was born :] I dabbled in Visual Basic and C++ in high school, but ultimately decided to pursue web programming (XHTML,CSS, LAMP).

</comment><comment><USER20> Google and read a little to see if the syntax was different from what I'm used to. Brute force. Get stuck.

Repeat.

I have found that if I read to much about the language I would greek out and spend more time thinking of what if and not produce.

</comment><comment> tclviii-yc APL Interactive Approach ... Mr Gilman took us through it 2 afternoons a week at the Bell Middle School ... we wrote the programs out longhand and got 15 minutes a week to type it into 2741 terminal hooked to a 15 cps acustic coupler

</comment><comment><USER21> In elementary school, I started with Turbo Pascal.

I remember that I had bought a book or two and did simple exercises my teacher gave me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Commodore 64 basic was the first.

10 PRINT "Peter"

20 GOTO 10

Awesome!

<comment><USER16> I remember adding a ";" to the end of the Print statement and being absolutely mesmerized by the pattern the scrolling text made :)

<comment><USER22> Same here! And then fill the screen in interesting ways.

Ah the wonders of "goto".</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Takipi log links - view live data directly from your log files - <AUTHOR> http://www.takipi.com/logs.html

<comment><USER2> For a very techy subject, I really like the creativity on the site's design. I like the Eclipse icons on the field at the bottom for example. Creative, without forgetting that we are talking about technology. Props to the designer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting! But does this mean that for every log line, the current full stack is sent to Takipi? Doesn't this wreak havoc on performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> The log links don't send the full stack for every log line, only for the ones with fatal errors. moreover, the log links pace is controlled, so if your system "chokes" on logs, Takipi will lower the links rate, so they'll only appear when an "interesting" error occurs, i.e new/unfamiliar errors, or ones that provide you with new information.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Podcasts – Have/Want? - <AUTHOR> What podcasts do you like? What podcasts do you wish existed? <comment><USER2> I have a different approach to podcasts, I don't listen often and don't subscribe to any particular ones but try finding new sources as often as possible. Usually I do a simple keyword search and download a few top results. This works for me especially well when coupled with researching a new paradigm, language or platform. Maybe it's listening to casual conversation that makes it easier for me to discover new terms and trends. Hope this helps somebody!

</comment><comment><USER3> I code mostly in the .Net web stack, and lead a team of web developers that do both .Net and Java work using Angular. I blogged a couple months ago about my favorite tech podcasts:

[http://agilecoder.net/2016/08/23/developer- podcasts/](http://agilecoder.net/2016/08/23/developer-podcasts/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Two that I listen to every week are Giant Robots and Startups for the Rest of Us - they have a lot of broadly-applicable startup info, but are also primarily focused on SaaS. I wish there were podcasts on building/growing/running downloadable software product-based startups.</comment>


Proof That iOS Still Hasn't Gotten Undo Right - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2018/12/ios_still_hasnt_gotten_undo_right <comment><USER2> I still can't select multiline text in a reliable manner after all these years. Those little handles jump around and you end up stuck selecting the weirdest substring. Moving app icons from one page to another is more of an art (I don't have fat fingers either).

I will say that after all these years, the most amazing thing is how much the iPhone interface got right on launch. Those first years were magical, like suddenly being thrust into the future. I just hope Apple finds Jobs 2.0 Dalai Lama style before they do irreparable damage.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried using force touch to select text--I have big fingers and it's my fav. iPhone feature. You just put the cursor on a word and press hard--the word gets selected. Then press even harder and the surrounding words get selected--you can also press hard and drag one side of the selection cursor to select left or right of the datum. (You need a 6s or greater phone though--5se won't do it).

<comment><USER4> This only works for editable text, though, right?

Selecting text from websites or other static text is as clumsy as ever.

<comment><USER5> Despite 8_hours_ago's comment, I also find selecting text from websites to not be so easy on iOS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The areas Apple runs to add and improve (AR, 3D face emojis, lotta camera depth work) keep landing in stark contrast to basics like this for me.

I'm still waiting, for almost a decade now, to have two (or more) countdown timers run simultaneously without a 3rd party app. Cooking two items at once continues to fall behind on the Cupertino priority list to tracking dozens of World Clocks to the second.

<comment><USER7> I am still waiting for a way to turn off wifi and bluetooth in the control center.

The decision on making those buttons just disconnect was something I have a very hard time comprehending.

<comment><USER8> Not the same, but you can use Shortcuts to make a shortcut to turn off wifi completely in the notification centre widget area

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On one hand: true.

On the other hand: it's actually not so ridiculous to advertise quick undo for an app that involves drawing. MyPaint for example stands out as having undo mapped to Z instead of Ctrl+Z, an amazing quality of life improvement for drawing that I wish more painting apps had. It sounds minor... but I end up using Undo an insane amount when drawing, and this lets me relax my hand more.

So, I can also see why that's a good thing to mention, too.

<comment><USER10> I'd say there is nothing bad about having _additional_ shortcuts for often used functions, as long as the standard ones still work (and of course as long as there _is_ a standard...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some other things that iOS still hasn't gotten right:

\- The "back" button. For every application it's in a different location.

\- Connecting an external USB drive is impossible.

\- There is no filesystem.

<comment><USER12> > The "back" button. For every application it's in a different location.

Swipe from the left edge of the screen.

<comment><USER13> Not a system gesture, but installed for sheets on a per-app basis.

<comment><USER14> It is exactly a system gesture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Poweruser oriented touch apps are going to have non-trivial learning curves, regardless of how well something in particular is signposted.

I take the point that the quoted paragraph from the App Store is indeed notable, but not that it indicates a major iOS snafu, with some kind of big win just there for the taking.

<comment><USER16> This is a really great point, most of my friends still don't use half of the features exist currently. I have no idea how you'd go about messaging that to users.

<comment><USER10> That's where a menu bar shines: it allows you to browse for and discover new functions. Sure, most people still won't use most of those. But at least you have a realistic chance of finding them.

Of course this is not unique to menu bars, they just happen to be one established way to squeeze a lot of functions into a tight places. For a touch interface, we may want different ways to do that; but I'd argue that it's still crucial to provide non-hidden, discoverable ways to access all functions of your app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unlike Gruber, I do think iOS needs a menu bar, or something similar. Maybe on iPad only due to size constraints. Something optional for apps (not every app needs one), hidden by default (something you can invoke with some gesture), that includes common commands (like text selection commands, undo and redo, etc) and eventually expandable with Shortcuts. At least _one_ thing besides the keyboard and text input that is common between apps.

<comment><USER10> Actually, he never says that he does _not_ think iOS needs a menu bar. He just says "I'm not arguing that iOS should have a Mac-style menu bar." which makes sense, because doing so would distract from the core of his criticism -- adding a menu bar is only one possible way to address it. And there is a footnote on that sentence, too, which suggests that in a sense, Apple is already having a (bad) fake menu in their iWorks apps...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am iPhone X 256GB with Apple Care is 1400 GBP (1780 in USD), and way more if you're not paying upfront. I really don't want to shake it for any reason.

<comment><USER19> Why though? Phones (like tablets and most modern notebooks) don't have any moving parts.

If you're worried that the rapidly changing acceleration loosens some screws, then you better leave that phone right at home because running to catch the bus (with the phone in your pocket) produces about the same acceleration patterns.

<comment><USER20> It's more about the chances of it slipping out of your grip, like an overenthusiastic Wiimote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Undo is an art and Google has been practicing it for awhile on Android.

<comment><USER10> Out of curiosity (I haven't used Android in quite some time, and even then only cursory): does Android (resp. Google) have a good solution for uniform Undo in phone apps? How does it work?

<comment><USER22> The back button has been around for awhile now, but only steps back one page/view. While I don't use iOS, Ikd equate it to the swipe left-to-right gesture to go back

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nearly every time I use my SO's phone, I tap the non-existent back button to the right of Home, then curse at Apple.

<comment><USER24> Meh. On most non-Samsung Android devices, the back button is on the left. I really don't know why Samsung swapped the buttons around.

<comment><USER25> Old Android had the back button on the right. Google fixed that mistake on Android 4.0, but Samsung chose to keep the old order.</comment></comment></comment>


GRE - <AUTHOR>

Anyone have any comments on the best book/software/websites for getting ready to take the GRE's. <comment><USER2> Best websites:

<http://www.drrajusgre.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=15>

I'm sure ETS isn't happy about this, but some test takers in India regularly post actual GRE quant questions to these forums.

<http://www.quizlet.com>

This fantastic site lets you create your own virtual flashcard sets manually or from other people's sets. Once you've got your sets there's a variety of study games they have to help you learn your words. Theres a couple high frequency GRE word lists here that you can hack up into manageable amounts and work through progressively.

Best book: Barron's

I also have a few helpful .pdf's I found during my studies. email@example.com if you want them. Good luck on your test, I take mine in January.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I will pick up Barron's GRE and the Princeton Review this evening. noisedom:those websites look to be very helpful as well. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> Good books include : 1\. Barrons GRE 2\. princeton review

</comment><comment><USER4> Study vocab using spaced repetition software like Anki.</comment>


Estonia wants to become a 'country as a service' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/interview-with-estonia-cio-taavi-kotka-2016-4 <comment><USER2> Estonia is such an interesting country. Story is that after the fall of communism they built, their entire economic model off of Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" book, having relatively little knowledge of any economics. This lead to some very interesting successes as a post-communist nation, especially considering Free to Choose was likely a banned book just a few years before. It sounds like they are going even further to the right and experimenting with some of the ideas from Anarcho-capitalism.

Bully for them. It's been working for them in the past, and it's nice to see a government that (at least seems) to have their act together trying out some weird and out there stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like it'll be a non-starter for most sane businesses given the insane reporting requirements.

 _we started to ask companies to give us more data. The reason is we wanted to get rid of fraud. Currently, all the companies in Estonia are declaring their B2B deals. If I'm a company and you're a company and I buy something off you and it's more than €1,000, we both have to declare it_

<comment><USER4> How is this insane? It's just about keeping very clear logs of the transactions, right? I's not like in the US they don't know where my money transfers are coming from.

<comment><USER3> What business is it of a government what I spend money on?

<comment><USER5> It's their tax business.

<comment><USER6> It's unusual for a government to ask for recordings of individual transactions. Tax forms tend to ask for aggregate numbers on quarterly or yearly boundaries.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but you are required to retain much more detailed records and produce them upon request.

<comment><USER6> In unusual circumstances, like an audit perhaps. Many small businesses go their entire existence without sharing detail level transactions with the government.

So, when it's proposed, it's unusual, and is worthy of concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From [https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/](https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/)

 _e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. The e-Resident smart ID card is not a physical identification or a travel document, and does not display a photo._

<comment><USER9> It's like they chose the second most misleading name they could think of (#1 being "e-citizen").

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Imagine this becoming a thing. Where anyone could eventually become Estonia's resident with all the rights (and of course responsibilities) equal to the people actually living there. Once other nations would follow, then the borders would truly start to disappear because it wouldn't really matter where you are located. No more us and them, just people of the earth.

I know it's way too optimistic and this solution probably introduces just as many problems as it solves, but still, one is allowed to dream, right?

<comment><USER11> Well tax laws apply to you based on your tax residence and your citizenship so this has very limited benefits if you are already living in a western country. Plus due to all the anti money laundering rules you will have tough time opening a bank account remotely.

<comment><USER12> Actually, Estonia just passed a law which will allow remote bank account opening for all e-residents.

<comment><USER11> Passing a law and being able to implement it are 2 different things. If US decides to put pressure on banks they will comply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did businessinsider just run an article about what was an april fools joke?

[http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a- servi...](http://arcticstartup.com/article/estonian-country-as-a-service-due- soon-but-not-on-april-1/)

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

<comment><USER14> The article is about [https://www.leapin.eu/](https://www.leapin.eu/) and [https://e-estonia.com/](https://e-estonia.com/)

Those two sites don't seem like an april fools jokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Estonia's E-Residency program has gotten a few mentions on HN before, at one point they actually replied to some of the comments here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9537551)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407604)

And Kaspar Korjus, director of the E-Residency program, gave an AMA over on the Digital Nomad forum a few months ago:

[https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s- e-r...](https://nomadforum.io/t/i-m-kaspar-director-of-estonia-s-e-residency- program-ama/4769)

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting, though physical residency must come in at some point, otherwise who pays taxes for the country you actually live in? But hey, if they start making good laws, I'd move there, as European it's very easy. But good laws means also lower taxes and a decent healthcare at decent prices.

<comment><USER17> > But good laws means ... decent healthcare at decent prices

I'd say it means decent healthcare, universally free of charge.

<comment><USER16> For cancer yes, but for a back pain? It's very hard to make universal healthcare because universal healthcare is a very subjective term. The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance plans and then make sure that what's not covered is priced honestly.

<comment><USER17> > For cancer yes, but for a back pain

Yes. Someone shouldn't have to suffer in pain because they work a low paid job, or are unemployed.

> The only way to make healthcare universal is to work out serious insurance > plans

It's not the only way. The other way is for our taxes to foot the bill, as we do in the UK with the NHS.

The NHS is _far_ from perfect, with long waiting lists and varying levels of care depending on your location - but it works, and provides universal healthcare to the whole of the UK.

<comment><USER16> Well, I have never seen a healthcare system that works well for non-deadly issues like back pain and I have lived in Italy, Denmark and Germany. Also, at the end of the day somebody has to pay the bill, so either you pay with taxes or someone else has to pay yours with his taxes. Considering population is getting older, people that can pay your healthcare bills are going to be scarcer and scarcer. From a practical standpoint, what you want is unattainable. If we focus on the right stuff, instead, we can make sure that we are all better off, while right now public healthcare is a joke and people end up paying the same thing 2 times (first public healthcare insurance, second the private doctor).

<comment><USER18> IMO, the real goal should not simply be triage. 'Saving lives' is a huge part of why healthcare costs keep increasing. If you focus on quality of life things like late stage Cancer become lower priority's.

PS: If we spent 5% as much on back pain research as we have on Cancer there would likely be a range of viable treatments for most issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given the long history of flags of convenience and purchasable citizenship in tax havens, something like this seems bound to be attempted eventually. If it takes off, it'll be curious to see how hard the pushback is.

<comment><USER20> Their doesn't need to be pushback. Every country that has an income tax taxes its residents, whether or not they are citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not too many in silicon valley can claim that:

... He adds: "I have been like a kid in a candy store. I have lots of investment money and full political support."</comment>