KeyMe – Copy keys and solve lockouts - <AUTHOR> https://key.me/ <comment><USER2> This would be awesome, except for the fact that my landlord installed a "Mul- T-Lock" with "DO NOT DUPLICATE" instructions on all tenant keys, to prevent over-occupied apartments, unauthorized sublets, and squatters.

[http://www.mul-t-lock.com/](http://www.mul-t-lock.com/)

And, guess what I tried: grinding off the "DO NOT DUPLICATE" instructions with an angle grinder, and getting copies made anyway.

I walk into the hardware store, and ask the clerk for a copy. The guy glances at it, and gives me a funny look, and says:

      You got the card?

      Card? Uh... Ah, nah man, not on me.

Pause and a long look...

      Okay, $25 bucks. Pay in cash.

...long pause. I look at the key prices, and a Mul-T-Lock copy is priced at $5. The guy's obviously inflating the price of the copy as an implicit bribe to do something he's not supposed to do. Fuck it. Let's see where this goes.

5 minutes later and I have a copy that works perfectly.

Next week, the super changes the lock on the front door, distributes new keys to all tenants and tells us that the master was reported stolen.

<comment><USER3> In the future you will be able to just scan the key and then 3D print a precise replica from the safety of your home.

<comment><USER2> Sure, "in the future", but right now, most common 3D printers seem to only operate with a precision of ~0.5 mm.

I've thought about trying to make a crude 3D printed copy now, with a current generation printer, and polishing the ABS with acetone, to produce a higher quality copy manually.

The resistance of the springs on my building's outer door lock give a pretty smooth, low-resistance action that plastic (or maybe even wood, but not hard wax or soap) might tolerate, but then I'm paying $3,000 for a copy...

<comment><USER4> fwiw Shapeways claims 0.125mm on brass: [http://www.shapeways.com/materials/brass](http://www.shapeways.com/materials/brass)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly OT:

Is this type of key common in the US? A few years back I bought a lockpicking set, and locks like these are incredibly easy to open without much training.

In Switzerland we have KABA locks pretty much everywhere. I don't know but I think they're much harder to pick and I guess you can't reconstruct them out of a photo because you don't know the depth of the holes.

Also you need the key and lock the door from the outside with it, so you can't really lock yourself out. Doors that snap lock are incredibly rare here.

Photo: [http://www.kaba.ch/media/466464/v6/resized535x-1/dunkelrot-f...](http://www.kaba.ch/media/466464/v6/resized535x-1/dunkelrot- farbcode-01.jpg)

<comment><USER6> They are. But I honestly don't care that much, because when my home was broken into, this is how they picked my lock: [http://imgur.com/vN2LkNn](http://imgur.com/vN2LkNn)

Here is an alternate solution: [http://imgur.com/inJp7zB](http://imgur.com/inJp7zB)

Yes, picking a lock is much quieter but the reality is most break-ins emphasize the word "break".

<comment><USER7> I worked as an apprentice locksmith from the middle of high school until I graduated college - we always told people, standard locks should be looked at only as a way to inconvenience a person from breaking in. If someone _really_ wants to break into your house, they are going to; it's only a matter of how long it takes them to get in, and through what method. Granted, it was at this point they would ask about security systems, which we also installed - but the general principal still stands.

<comment><USER5> > _If someone really wants to break into your house, they are going to_

That's the basic principle of security. Be it crypto, physical security or anything else.

You're always just buying time. So the question is how much time do you want to buy.

If you can kick down the door in 2 seconds you just have a very low security margin. Compare this with crypto where you measure security margins in years. I'm just a bit baffled that it's _that_ low for apartments in the US.

You probably couldn't kick down most doors here. Well at least I couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They've been testing the market in 7-11's around NYC. They had a kiosk setup in my local 7-11, and had some salespeople promoting the service for a few months.

I have no idea how many people they signed up ... but the salespeople and the kiosk are now gone. Anybody, from the neighborhood, that signed up expecting to be able to go back to that kiosk to print a replacement key are out of luck.

<comment><USER9> I actually got locked out a week ago and went back to one of their kiosks. I didn't see any of the salespeople from before either, but I was able to access my key with my fingerprint and email. You can still get your key made if you've registered before.

<comment><USER10> Created 9 minutes ago and this is the only comment? That's odd.

<comment> rkuykendall-com You expect more than 1 comment for a 9 minute old account? People join HackerNews, often because they finally have something to say in a comment thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like a pretty novel idea. Until you lose your phone, your key.me account is hacked or any of a number of other things cause your data to get into the wrong hands.

I'm not saying a physical key is perfect or doesn't have most of the same issues (lost, theft, etc.), but why create a larger attack surface through a medium you have potentially less control of?

<comment><USER12> Assuming you don't have an address tied to your account, the risk can be mitigated somewhat. If you KeyMe account is hacked or phone is lost, it's similar to losing the physical key itself-- the thief doesn't really know what the key goes to.

But, if the KeyMe user database is hacked along with personal information (billing address), then it becomes an issue.

Also, if you lose your phone and have emergency contact information (or can lookup the address associated with the phone number), then the thief also knows where to go.

<comment><USER13> Hopefully everyone has a locked phone, but if they have a stolen phone and have gotten past the lock it is not hard to figure out someones home address on their phone by looking around apps and looking at the contacts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I did this as a fun project a while back [http://dittokey.com/](http://dittokey.com/) .

I open sourced the app:

[https://github.com/andrewseddon/dittokey- iphone](https://github.com/andrewseddon/dittokey-iphone)

and computer vision:

[https://github.com/andrewseddon/keyify](https://github.com/andrewseddon/keyify)

No production ready, complete hack, but it does work. The vision side is an interesting problem. This was a while back and i was dealing with older cameras. I should imagine with modern phone cameras it's a pretty simple problem.

<comment><USER15> Oh, man! I saw this a while back and was very excited about it. I have a project I've been working on off and on in my spare time that I'd love to talk to you about if you'd be up for a conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just don't forget your keys and your phone.

My wife and I are looking into coded door locks (infant at home and the wife is afraid of locking herself out and the baby in) and found there's a $219 dollar door lock you can open with your phone. May make more sense then this solution.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CPTD5AQ/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=178...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CPTD5AQ/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=kwikset-20)

<comment><USER17> Checkout this -> [https://lockitron.com/](https://lockitron.com/)

<comment><USER18> I assume OP is looking for an existing product, not one that might ship when the moons of Jupiter align.

In all seriousness though, I've been waiting for my Lockitron for almost a year now, and others have been waiting for much longer. At this point, there's no way I can recommend Lockitron to anybody as anything more than a cool concept.

<comment><USER19> They sent me an email telling me my unit "shipped" last July and would arrive July 14-20th. 3 months later it still wasn't here so I sent an email, and the response was basically, "Uh... we expected to ship it to you at that time, but really we have no idea when we can actually ship it."

1 year after preorder they had to process the amazon payments preorders or amazon would void them. So here I am almost 2 years since I preordered a product that I've paid for, and they can't even give me an expected ship date.

Of course they continue to send marketing emails/self congratulatory accomplishments about software updates and hardware fixes for a product that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER20> To their credit, they did offer the option to extend the authorization and not charge you until it shipped.

<comment><USER19> But have never been upfront about that fact that it would likely take them 3 years to enter the market. Most of their email blasts are about them being _right around the corner_

<comment><USER20> Seriously? I expected the same thing I expect with most Kickstarter/similar projects (and those make you pay up front): there will be delays, there will be periods where you're more in the dark than you'd like to be, and it's gonna be a while before you have a product in your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They still called it a "kiosk"? I think I respect them for not going down that pun road.

</comment><comment><USER22> Convenience vs Use Rate is off. I make keys maybe once every 5 years... am I weird?

Lockouts are convenient for sure... but still the low occurrence rate makes proactive sign up a tough proposition.

<comment><USER23> This was my thought also. I get locked out maybe once a decade, I really don't see the point in installing an app for that 'problem'. Chances are, by the time I need this service I will have long forgotten about it and go down an alternative commonplace route.

<comment><USER22> If I ammortize the time, frustration and cost over a decade it's only penny/seconds a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> To me this is like posting my password on the wall so that I don't forget.

<comment><USER25> And writing the GPS location of the lock in question on the note. :-O

In a couple of months I expect to see a HN story that is a google search of geotagged images of keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Fascinating, but I don't think I've ever been locked out of my house. CARS, on the other hand, are another story. But in this day of laser-cut keys and computer chips, this app won't be very helpful.

I am more interested in the DUPLICATION service, considering the failure rate of keys I get from Home Depot, etc. (50% at best).

</comment><comment><USER27> ...And don't forget to link with Foursquare account, so we'll know when you're on vacation overseas! Well, I'm obviously kidding, but I don't feel it's wise to share key material just like that.

Guess, an encrypted file that's kept near the lock (like QR code kept at friendly neighbor's place or in your own postbox) which is decrypted and shown to a locksmith only when necessity arises would be a better idea. Unless, well, you forget the passphrase (which has to be strong) to decrypt the key.

(Yep, they may kept data encrypted, and they probably do, but one has to trust on their word for that.)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think I'd rather go this direction: [https://lockitron.com/](https://lockitron.com/) ... having my physical key info backed up in my phone sounds fine, but I think I'd rather avoid physical keys anyway, if possible. Despite the somewhat obvious fear of hacking/etc, I still think digital security is much more secure than your average lock. You can get a bump key for something like $1 online.

<comment><USER29> What if you lose your phone? Or what if, like these folks, you suddenly decide you don't want a smartphone anymore? [http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-16/news/ct- flip-p...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-01-16/news/ct-flip-phone- met-20140116_1_young-adults-smartphone-ownership-smartphone-users)

If having a physical key image stored elsewhere is a concern, then a keyless combo lock is probably the simpler alternative. You just remember your key code (hopefully) and don't need to carry anything besides your memory.

<comment><USER30> If you lose your phone, then use your regular key to open the door.

If you lose _both_ , well, there's only so much you can reasonably protect against.

<comment><USER29> Well, if I have to use a regular key, then there's no benefit to having a an electronic lock.

And yes, I suggested a "keyless" code lock in case you lose the key ;)

In an emergency condition, the simplest action (the one with the fewest steps, protocols or devices) you can take to recover completely is the best action. Losing your key and phone while being chased by muggers (for example) is just such an emergency. If you have enough faculties to remember your key code, you can still enter your home even if you're naked.

I like to think of services like KeyMe, which I do think is a fantastic idea, as an extra nicety during non-emergencies.

<comment><USER30> The point is that you use your phone most of the time, but keep a key with you as backup. More convenience, less risk.

Being able to get into my house immediately even after losing both phone and keys is not a priority for me. If I'm being chased by a criminal near my own house after losing my keys and phone, I'll just shout until the neighbors come out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe the future of TaskRabbit becomes like Amazon. That is, you still sell a fair few services (products) but where you really make money is as an umbrella for all of these one use services that are starting up. Just go to TaskRabbit to search for "pick up my dry cleaning. Send me a gluten free meal. Lost my key please replace" and they route and take a cut to these services.

</comment><comment><USER32> With all the high quality optics on the market, what is stopping you from taking a picture of a key that belongs to somebody else? I am also somewhat surprised there is no legislature that prevents locksmiths from duplicating keys without physical copy being present.

Otherwise this is pretty awesome idea, that unfortunately highlights that it is high time our locks got more secure.

<comment><USER33> Both Keyme and Keysduplicated.com makes sure you have pictures of both the front and back of the key, so you can't just do a fly by picture of keys on a table. They also have your CC and mailing address, which is more traceable than just going to the hardware store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If anyone is interested in playing around with it, Keys Duplicated has an API that you can use to make copies of keys from pictures:

[https://keysduplicated.com/API](https://keysduplicated.com/API)

Its perfect for businesses that need access to the home, like cleaning and delivery services.

</comment><comment><USER34> I thought about making an app like this and open sourcing it for the hell of it. It wouldn't be too difficult to limit the scanning (read: image recognition) to just 5 notch Kwikset and Schlage (standard/ residential) keys and outputting the key's code to the user.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have a Kwikset pushbutton combo deadbolt. I can use either my key, a button combo, or my ZWave-enabled home security system via my phone to unlock the front door. Cost around $150 and took 10 minutes to install.

</comment><comment><USER36> Similar service that was previously on HN: [https://keysduplicated.com](https://keysduplicated.com)

They now have an API too, and are targetting commercial used.

<comment><USER37> This will scale much more quickly and has a better use case if applied to a multi-person scenario indeed - where there is a need for one to grant someone else physical access. Considering how many physical locks there still are, despite the increasing usage of all the "smart locks" (biometric, mobile- connected etc.), this can really be useful to the masses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Great idea. How soon do you plan on having Android support? [http://imgur.com/NsXyL2Q](http://imgur.com/NsXyL2Q)

<comment><USER39> [http://imgur.com/gallery/lirgYqz](http://imgur.com/gallery/lirgYqz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Couldn't a strange use this app to copy your key?

<comment><USER41> I'm sure they could, but that makes attacks only slightly more difficult.

It's fairly trivial to look at common key blanks and visually identify the bitting (the "combination" of cut heights necessary to move the tumblers in the lock to the shear line). Sometimes the key has the bitting stamped right on it, numerically, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have a much easier solution for solving lockouts - only use deadbolt-type locks. Once you go outside, you can only lock it with the key.

</comment><comment><USER43> Have personally spent $70 for forgetting my keys inside. Not the worst money spent but an expensive lesson nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER44> So, I pickpocket the key of $stupid_colleague at work. Then, I deliver it to KeyMe to copy it... and place the keys back e.g. at the coffee machine, so that $stupid_colleague finds them again (or I do a reverse pickpocket).

Later that night, or when I know the guy is on vacation, I empty his house.

Yay for thieves.

<comment><USER15> What part of that sequence of events were you unable to do before KeyMe or KeysDuplicated?

<comment><USER44> The speed, the fact that I can supply the photos via an app so I basically need only a minute with the keys (e.g. when the colleague is on the toilet and leaves the keys on the desk), and the fact that there are no eyewitnesses.

A store clerk might be telling me to wait a bit for the key to duplicate, but in reality call the cops on me; there are cameras in hardware shops which can identify me and the bundle of keys and also there are other customers in the store.

<comment><USER15> You can get a high quality wrist-impression of a key in a couple of seconds if left alone with keys. You can even learn to sight read keys quite trivially. I don't think its so much the speed you are talking about as, perhaps, the accessibility of technique. I mean, if you can get a clean photo of a key, you can reproduce it. It's a physical object, its just metal. One of the first keys I ever made was from an old saw blade & just based on memory. Worked the very first time.

So, I don't think these services really change the game at all, but perhaps provide a new level of information to the general public?

Hopefully, as a rule, people would tend toward protecting their keys. Here's a gorgeous Cartier key protector: [http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/25421384_a-cartier-of- lo...](http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/25421384_a-cartier-of-london-9ct- gold-key) if you want to do it style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Seems safe.

</comment><comment><USER46> annnnd the app crashes for me

<comment><USER39> Sorry about that. We'll buy you a beer if you email us the details: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER46> email sent!</comment></comment></comment>


RFC 7764 – Guidance on Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7764 <comment><USER2> What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all support text/markdown. It really hits the sweet spot between plain text and HTML. It has enough structure to show a nice outline, and the triple back-tick syntax is great for marking bits of text as code.

All without specifying _how_ everything should look. You can read it as unformatted text, or let the mail client format everything in a style you like. This is sort-of like HTML without CSS (using the client's default stylesheet), but also very well readable as unformatted text, and free from the abuse of HTML email.

Alas. More and more companies are giving up on plain text email (even though this is required by the standard), and simply send you a hyperlink to click if you have plain text as your viewing preference for email.

<comment><USER3> > What I would really like is to end up in a situation where email clients all > support text/markdown. It really hits the sweet spot between plain text and > HTML. It has enough structure to show a nice outline, and the triple back- > tick syntax is great for marking bits of text as code.

Then we would have come full circle. A markup language that has been at least inspired if not derived from decade old usenet/mail conventions would be back where it started from.

> [...] and free from the abuse of HTML email.

Are you sure? The advantage of text/plain in mail is that I see every link as it is and no resources are loaded from external sources.

With markdown support in mail clients, we might be back at early HTML support. Link destinations would be unknowable again.

> Alas. More and more companies are giving up on plain text email (even though > this is required by the standard),

If it's not plain text, it has to declare a mime type (how would the mail client know how to render it?) but I don't think plain text section is mandatory.

> and simply send you a hyperlink to click if you have plain text as your > viewing preference for email.

Go tell them, and you can quote me on that, that they are stupid. If my mail client doesn't render text/html and prefers the text/plain sections that is because it is configured that way.

I know of no mail client that isn't able to handle HTML.

<comment><USER4> > Then we would have come full circle. A markup language that has been at > least inspired if not derived from decade old usenet/mail conventions would > be back where it started from.

Is this a bad thing?

> Are you sure? The advantage of text/plain in mail is that I see every link > as it is and no resources are loaded from external sources. > With markdown > support in mail clients, we might be back at early HTML support. Link > destinations would be unknowable again.

Not seeing how link destinations become unknowable. With no scripting there's no way for a site to hide the destination, it is what it is. Your viewer can choose to display it however it wants. Status bar like a browser, tooltip, whatever.

> If it's not plain text, it has to declare a mime type (how would the mail > client know how to render it?) but I don't think plain text section is > mandatory.

It is though. That's a major advantage of Markdown, by adopting those well- established mail/usenet conventions where practical and attempting to follow that sort of principle with less defined formatting there's not really anything lost if you treat it as plain text. The other way around is almost as safe, with very little chance of a a plain text message treated as Markdown being misinterpreted in a way which significantly impacts its meaning.

> I know of no mail client that isn't able to handle HTML.

Any text-mode mail client? I mean sure there are some that can interpret basic HTML formatting and translate that to control characters for a sufficiently capable terminal, but modern HTML mail tends to go far beyond that. Basically what formatting a text-mode client can actually handle also happens to be the same formatting that Markdown supports. No images, no fonts, no colors, just paragraphs, links, quotes, and some basic emphasis formatting.

<comment><USER3> >> Then we would have come full circle. A markup language that has been at least inspired if not derived from decade old usenet/mail conventions would be back where it started from.

> Is this a bad thing?

Not a bad thing but in this case it seems a little bit pointless as we wouldn't have gained much.

It happens a lot that something that is popular now has been there a while ago so you have some old farts saying "but we already had that 20 years ago!" although often there are some crucial changes to how it looked then so that it now has a completely different impact.

For example, we are about to get WebAssembly in the browers, essentially a bytecode VM. We had that 20 years ago with Java, although the integration of Java and the browser was not tight enough. Or VR which 20 years ago was quite hyped and then somehow just died down and for all I know the difference to today is only that the graphics was crappier back then.

Markdown in the mail client doesn't give you much over what we had 20 years ago. If I enable format-flowed and use a variable-width font, it probably looks quite similar to the rendered Markdown.

Oh, one thing I forgot about unstyled HTML pages. Mobile browsers suck a rendering that.

>> I know of no mail client that isn't able to handle HTML.

> Any text-mode mail client? I mean sure there are some that can interpret > basic HTML formatting and translate that to control characters for a > sufficiently capable terminal, but modern HTML mail tends to go far beyond > that. Basically what formatting a text-mode client can actually handle also > happens to be the same formatting that Markdown supports. No images, no > fonts, no colors, just paragraphs, links, quotes, and some basic emphasis > formatting.

Any text-mode mail client will have ways of rendering HTML with the help of external programs. That's not surprising, as they already needed that for things like images or PDFs. Some even let you fire up a browser to read them, some have some basic HTML parsing capabilities but I think most just do let some program convert the HTML to text to display inline as if it were a text/plain section.

As you can't rely on scripting being enabled (are there actually any mail client that still have HTML scripting?) the HTML needs to have all the text you want the receiver to read, so converting it to text usually works fine. I can't remember reading any legit HTML mail in the last years where this wasn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually kind of excited about this! A `text/markdown` MIME type could (maybe? hopefully?) pave the way for native content authoring in Markdown without having to use an HTML-targeting compiler between the author and the browser.

I might be being optimistic, but if that ever happens, it could be the start of a new era in internet content authorship!

<comment><USER3> Which markdown? There are various variants out there and the original is unsuitable for more than a most basic web page.

The RFC for text/markdown includes a variant specifier but that only makes me think that we would be repeating the mistake of early browers when there were browser-specific HTML tags.

<comment><USER6> Good point; we'd definitely need a standard. Thankfully, [CommonMark][1] has been in development a while now, and features a complete, unambiguous spec, reference implementation, and test suite.

A little more work on that to get it to version 1.0 and we'd be golden.

[1]: [http://commonmark.org/](http://commonmark.org/)

<comment><USER7> Is it really unambiguous? There is no grammar, but the spec describes things in English. It's really hard to avoid ambiguities and impossible to proof unambiguousness without formal methods.

<comment><USER6> I guess it's hard to say for sure that it's completely unambiguous, but that's definitely the intent. [The spec][1] even says:

> This document attempts to specify Markdown syntax unambiguously.

So if you're aware of any ambiguities in the spec, those are bugs which should be reported and fixed.

[1]: [http://spec.commonmark.org/0.27/](http://spec.commonmark.org/0.27/)

<comment><USER8> You may want to work on specifying a formal grammar in EBNF or similiar.

Great for library / parser implementers and it helps discover ambiguities.

<comment><USER9> From John MacFarlane, the author of the CommonMark spec:

> If anyone wants to contribute a BNF, please do! But I'm very skeptical that > it can be done, due to the many quirks of the syntax.

[https://github.com/jgm/CommonMark/issues/113#issuecomment-60...](https://github.com/jgm/CommonMark/issues/113#issuecomment-60467783)

<comment><USER10> So it's basically as useless for general processing as Markdown, because you won't have a grammar from which you can generate parser, hence all the parsers will be handcoded with various quirks differing from one to another and none of which will produce a parse tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best decision would be to drop Markdown from everything and pretend it never existed. Then design a similar format with a formal grammar, and use that.

The sad thing is this won't happen. Given the traction I suspect there will be broken, incompatible Markdown implementations 100 years from now. Markdown really has the potential to become the worst universally popular standard in computing history.

What bothers me is that its not one guy (Gruber) who made a mistake and designed a language without a formal grammar (hey, mistakes happen), its that armies of developers wrote broken parsers for a language without a formal grammar. This is an impossible task, why did they not refuse to create something fundamentally broken, by definition. Now there are apparently people who want to standardize Markdown, _without_ a formal grammar. How can they not realize that it will be _impossible_ to ever implement the standard? How do they not see that what they are doing is professionally unethical?

<comment><USER12> Nooo.. it just needs a proper formal grammar adopted, that captures the best of the common variants.

Then people can extend their tools to use that single variant and standard parser/grammar.

Most [good] languages were implemented first without a formal grammar - lex/yacc/bnf usually came later, if at all.

<comment><USER13> Markdown is quirk mode plain text. That was probably ok for its original purpose but it is not for what it is used nowadays. There are much better plain text like formats around and it's a shame markdown is in the position it is now. IMHO a well-defined subset of LaTeX (or context) with almost plain text markup for the 10 most commonly used commands would have been the better solution on the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Don't markdown files already have a MIME type of text/plain? Isn't that the point of markdown?

<comment><USER15> In the context of emails, I don't believe using a special MIME type for markdown provides any benefit. Raw markdown is plain text and generated content is HTML.

It seems interesting in the context of version controlled markdown files written for a particular hosting platform's markdown flavor, but I don't think a specification for identifying the flavor is the solution. This could be no different than any other form of documentation that is generated by a script or framework, but code hosting platforms have decided to make opinionated decisions for a magical UX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure wouldn't someone say that it is bloating of such simple format as Markdown, but I really want to see embedding of TeX math formulas in Markdown RFC/standard.

I'm talking about $\frac 3 4$ and $$\int x dx$$ notation. It is already implemented in some Markdown parsers, such as Pandoc and Jupyter Notebook, but because it is not standardized there are also a lot of parsers that don't support it. I think that adding it to the RFC/standard would reduce friction in math communications and make them more accessible, especially if Markdown format become widely used for email communications.

</comment><comment> c-smile "Oh how many of them had fallen into that chasm..." (C) M. Tsvetaeva

Instead of markdown we need something what I name as flat structural text format.

         <text>Base level text</text>
         <text li="disk">Bulleted list item</text>
         <text li="numeric">Numeric list item</text>
         <text li="numeric" level=2>Another list item</text>
         ...
         <text>Inline boldbold and italic</text>
         ...

In this case it will be trivial[1] to write WYSIWYG editor that has 1:1 mapping between markup and screen representation.

That 1:1 mapping is mission critical for human editing - our mental model of text is flat.

In fact that markdown is an attempt to provide such flat structural text representation. Ugly one we shall admit.

Microsoft Word, AFAIU, uses also flat DOM model internally, that's why its WYSIWYG is quite good.

HTML version 2 was last version that allowed unambiguous WYSIWYG editing of HTML. The one that had no idea of CSS.

[1] [http://blocknote.net](http://blocknote.net) \- WYSIWYG HTML editor that uses internal flat model.

<comment> crooked-v This entirely misses the point of Markdown: that it's completely readable as a document _without_ needing to apply any kind of visual formatting to it.

<comment> c-smile > completely readable ...

That's very subjective and only in very simple cases. Like "markdown" version here, on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > 1\. Dive into Markdown

Is that an obscure Mark Pilgrim reference or just a coincidence?

<comment><USER18> More than a coincidence, I think.

John Gruber wrote a post titled "Dive into Markdown", [https://daringfireball.net/2004/03/dive_into_markdown](https://daringfireball.net/2004/03/dive_into_markdown), and mentioned Mark Pilgrim in that post as well. It seems that John made a pun, applying the well-known titles of Mark's books to Markdown.

I guess the RFC copies the post title (and the opening quote by Stanley Kubrick) to pay an homage to John's start with Markdown?

<comment><USER17> Also, at the time, Mark Pilgrim had a blog called "Dive into Mark".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Meanwhile Restructured Text chugs along with a more capable syntax designed for extensibility from the start and without the problematic fragmentation of dialects.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://github.com/prettydiff/biddle](https://github.com/prettydiff/biddle) Can parse markdown to formatted stdout (ANSI colors, wordwrap, and so forth) on the console in both posix and Windows.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am still struggling with Markdown. In my opinion, the lack of a common, standardized specification thwarts its practicability as universal internet standard.

I still wonder why not more powerful markup languages like asciidoc spread more.

</comment><comment><USER22> Amateur question: Why can´t browsers just fetch a markdown file and render its html representation? (is this what the article implies?)

<comment><USER5> Browsers implement well-defined web standards, which Markdown unfortunately isn't. The original author, John Gruber (of daringfireball.net), hasn't been too supportive of having a single, fixed Markdown standard, and this has resulted in spinoffs with various syntaxes and features:

\- GitHub-flavoured Markdown

\- CommonMark

\- etc...

On top of that, there isn't even some meta-standard which would allow hashbang-style preambles/doctype declarations to determine which version of Markdown is being served.

So, between the fact that there's no fixed de-facto standard and no _de jure_ standard syntax or feature set recognized by any of the major standards bodies (IETF being one of these), it would be impractical for browser vendors to implement support for Markdown.

Finally, the standards that browsers implement take time both while being defined, as well as while being implemented; these are things that will be seen by _billions_ of people worldwide, and there's extremely little room for error, so revisions are always necessary at every stage in development. For example, work on HTML5 can be traced back as far as 2004, meaning that from inception to release, development took about a decade.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't they just adopt CommonMark? That flavor already has a complete spec and test suite, and is specifically designed to be as compatible with existing implementations as possible. I believe the only thing really missing is for more of the community to start rallying around the standard.

<comment><USER5> Community engagement's a big part of it, though. I can define my own, extremely thorough and well-documented standard for Markdown, and get, say, all my friends to use it and provide feedback; that wouldn't make it popular enough to be included in a browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> OMG wow! This could be really helpful!

</comment><comment><USER24>
      ```
      function test() {
        return "notice this feature?");
      }
      ```

Ummm...

</comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone ask Gruber for his help in this? Or is this like the stupid attempt at 'common markdown' a year or so ago to wrest 'control' out of his hands because he was 'a terrible steward' (or whatever the quote was).

If a single guy invented the standard, and you're not involving him (or at least getting his blessing), then this seems hostile.

I haven't seen him mention this on Twitter, which is what makes me wonder.

<comment><USER26> I don't think Common Markdown was a stupid attempt; I thought it was a praiseworthy attempt to standardise places where differing Markdown implementations differ, needlessly harming interoperability.

I think that Gruber deserves a colossal amount of credit for inventing the single-most-common end-user-usable marked-up-text format around. That's independent of what he's done in the dozen years since December 2004, which is the last update he made to his Markdown project's page.

<comment><USER27> Gruber gets credit for creating it AND for holding it back. Markdown needs a common standard. Gruber needs to hand Markdown over to folks who will let his legacy shine.

<comment><USER28> You write "credit for... holding it back" in an ironic sense, but ISTM that's really the only reason that markdown has seen wide adoption while numerous other simple markup languages have not. There haven't been dozens of different doodads grafted on at different times in different fashions to confuse users and converters, so people just use it and it just works.

<comment><USER6> > There haven't been dozens of different doodads grafted on at different times > in different fashions to confuse users and converters

Oh, but there have. For instance, code fences are not part of the original markdown spec, but are commonly supported in just about every implementation out there, and are rendered in about [7 different ways][1] depending on which converter you're using.

Play around for a little in BabelMark and you'll see why a standard is needed.

[1]: [http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?normalize=1&text=%60%6...](http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?normalize=1&text=%60%60%60%0Acode+here%0A%60%60%60)

<comment><USER28> Well that's one doodad, and apparently it has had the effect I predicted. Never mind, go ahead and have fun with your new super-markdown. One rather doubts it will displace actual markdown anytime soon.

<comment><USER6> That's exactly the problem: there is no "actual Markdown". Just a bunch of mutually incompatible competing implementations.

If something like CommonMark had existed from the beginning, we wouldn't have this issue because everyone would be following the standard.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


German public prosecutors don't provide sufficient independence [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-05/cp190068en.pdf <comment><USER2> [https://verfassungsblog.de/confidence-and- trust/](https://verfassungsblog.de/confidence-and-trust/) has an excellent take on this. Some key sentences: "The reasons are obvious: with the right to issue directives, politicians could theoretically influence who is investigated and who is indicted — and, even more relevant, who is not. … The counter-argument has also been known for a long time: The right to give instructions exists so that someone will bear the political responsibility…"

</comment><comment><USER3> Only Italian prosecutors are really independent. Everywhere else it's a sham.

<comment><USER2> If if's a sham and you know it, you'll be able to give some examples, won't you? This is about Germany, so please, please, please: An example of any of the 17 relevant ministers shielding someone from prosecution, and one of inappropriate prosecution.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Bavarian justice minister ordered the public prosecutor to drop prosecution against Mollath.

Yes, the Internet mob was happy.

But even if you disagree with my opinion that he should have gone to jail, you will surely agree that this directive by a minister is troubling, even if it is in favor of "your guy".

<comment><USER2> No. IMO, the moment SZ uncovered that the judge had made that phone call which both parties denied, the case couldn't proceed. Lying witnesses lied plus a lying judge adds up to too much doubt. In dubio pro.

(Didn't the judge refuse to talk about that phone call once its existence was public, too, or am I confusing it with a different case? It's been a few years.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea what you're talking about.

There was no judge involved. That's the point. When the justice minister ordered the prosecutor to drop the case (technically, the appeal), the court could not convict, by procedural law.

<comment><USER2> There was a judge involved, Otto Brixner was his name. Brixner sent Mollath off to a padded cell in 2006 for being deranged and confirmed/extended that a couple of times. Then five or six years later it turned out that at least some of the deranged ramblings about tax evasion and white-collar crimes were correct. Further, Brixner had spoken to the relevant investigators before he sentenced Mollath, Brixner denied having done that, and when someone leaked paperwork that proved that Brixner's denial was a lie, he refused to talk about what was said.

As I recall, there was also other questions. Wasn't there something about where Mollath's possessions ended up, and Brixner refused to talk about that too?

In such a state, Mollath's possible guilt becomes irrelevant. Only an impartial court can sentence, and the border is between "trusted impartiality" and "not trusted". This is why judges are required to recuse themselves if there is a possibility that they may be thought partial, instead of e.g. if they can be proved to be partial, or if the balance of evidence suggests that they may.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clojure Interop with R and Python on GraalVM - <AUTHOR> http://gigasquidsoftware.com/blog/2017/10/22/embedded-interop-between-clojure-r-and-python-with-graalvm/ <comment><USER2> This is a pretty cool instance of running code together, but it doesn't look like you can interchange variables or data. The most common use case for needing to run Python and R together (IMO) is loading some data from Python and using a R library to do some analysis or graphing.

The bottleneck is still converting that pandas DataFrame to an R data.frame efficiently.

<comment><USER3> And for Clojure and the other languages, it also looks like this might be more a present for Christmas 2018...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Christmas came early this year.</comment>


This New Printer Works in the Lonely Vacuum of Outer Space – Make: - <AUTHOR> http://makezine.com/2015/08/12/new-printer-works-in-space/ <comment><USER2> From my lay knowledge of space travel, they seem to have lots of other issues to address before, as the OP puts it, "structures will be produced in space that are much larger than what could currently fit into a launch fairing".

Top of my list would be tidal forces in low orbit. It's microgravity, not zero gravity. If you extrude out a long structure it is going to bend ever so slightly. So you need either a brace (an existing big structure) or some sort of laser measurement to adjust the build process to compensate.

>>>"In a vacuum there is no air to affect heat radiation"

Shouldn't that be convection? Heat loss through radiation should be somewhat the same in a vacuum.</comment>


Sharing Scheduler App Buffer Raises $400,000, Gets Kicked Out Of US - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/20/sharing-scheduler-app-buffer-raises-400000-gets-kicked-out-of-us/ <comment><USER2> As an American, our immigration policies make me so damn mad. I know both Leo and Joel quite well, having went through AngelPad together, and they were building a solid company that should have stayed in America.

The fact that wealth-builders, and innovative startup founders that seek to create new frontiers can't legally find a way of staying in this country is preposterous.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so unfortunate to happen to such a good group of founders. When Buffer first launched, I sent Joel an email pertaining to cron jobs. I was just learning to code generic hello world scripts, and he not only got back to me, but his response was helpful and encouraging. The US lost a good team in this gaffe, unfortunately.

I actually now use Buffer regularly at my startup (I should actually start using it more), and to be honest, I never cared where you guys were based -- the product worked well. Just keep up the good work wherever you settle :)

</comment><comment><USER4> How were they in the US in the first place?

<comment><USER5> Seems they just moved here to do a startup, then applied too late for a H1B visa. They don't seem too bothered by it. They get to live in Hong Kong! Sounds awesome to me. [http://leostartsup.com/2011/12/why-we-are-taking-our- startup...](http://leostartsup.com/2011/12/why-we-are-taking-our-startup-to- hong-kong-and-other-crazy-stories-of-2011/)

I didn't think getting a H1B visa was that easy, though. You just move to the US and apply? It doesn't work that way, does it? Don't you need to have a job and somehow justify that you need a visa?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is definitely _not_ a failure of your immigration system.

They didn't even move to the US to start this, it started in the UK and then, let's be frank, they went off to the US for a jolly holiday. Now they're going to Hong Kong for a jolly holiday.

All props to starting a business, etc. but if you can't sell Buffer from the UK and you can't sell it from the US, you're not going to be able to sell it from Hong Kong.

To everyone saying the US lost a great team, they didn't need to be there. The company was setup in the UK already running, it started in 2010. Joel was standing in front of me practically a year to the day in the UK advocating bootstrapping and now he's suddenly raised $400,000 for a trivial twitter app. How on earth can you spend $400,000 on a tweet scheduler?

The guy's great, I think the apps great for what it is, yes they're having a great time travelling the world. I appreciate people can change their minds.

Also they're probably a UK company and pay UK corporation taxes, not US ones, but I'm not sure as their terms of service and their website don't explicitly say who the legal owner of the app is or their registration number or registration address (illegally I might add if they're from the UK). If he's running it as a sole trader he should explicitly say so in his terms of service.

EDIT: Joel's deck from Dec 2010 advocating bootstrapping:

[http://notttuesday.com/2010/12/17/joel-gascoignes-lean- start...](http://notttuesday.com/2010/12/17/joel-gascoignes-lean-startup- slide-deck/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Matt,

You're absolutely right, it's not a failure of the US immigration system. We looked into all our options, and we were working with a very good and well respected immigration lawyer to apply for H1B visas. Unfortunately, they ran out of visas on the quota for the year just before we applied. So, we never even applied for a visa, and we certainly weren't rejected visas or kicked out of the country, so it's not a failure of the immigration system. I do think perhaps the system could cater a little better to people in our situation who were very keen to stick around in the US and hire US citizens to build our company. Nevermind though, we'll hopefully be back soon enough to do exactly that.

I'm glad you saw me speak at NottTuesday just over a year ago. That's right after I launched Buffer, and at that point it was me by myself and just a few paying users and perhaps 100 users in total. I was still learning a huge deal at that point, and quite frankly I'm still making all sorts of mistakes to this day, but I think that will always be the case. I do like to think that now with over 1400 paying customers (85,000 users in total) and a $200,000 annual revenue run rate, we _did_ sell Buffer from the UK, we _did_ sell Buffer from the US, and I'm confident we'll continue on our non-linear growth path whilst we are based in Hong Kong.

As for needing to be in the US, that's an interesting point to ponder. Shortly after the NottTuesday talk I brought on board a co-founder. Then, a few months later, being in the US enabled us to gain a place on AngelPad and with the investment hire our first employee much faster than we would have otherwise been able to. I still advocate bootstrapping, and indeed Buffer was bootstrapped for 9 months to profitability before we thought about funding. Without a previous track record, having that kind of traction is essential in my mind. We're a US company.

We're having a great time travelling the world, but we're also working pretty damn hard. In my mind, I truly believe both need to go hand in hand to be truly successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats guys! Sorry to see you go :(

<comment><USER8> Thanks a lot Rob! Not to worry, I am sure we will be back in a few months! :)

<comment><USER9> How did you move to Hong Kong? Are there any special requirements so you can setup your start-up there and get a VISA?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could you move to the Chilli Startup. Seems interesting over there. I've been tempted to apply.

</comment><comment><USER11> I for one am ashamed that my country has mistreated them.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hold on. If the average person reads 10 articles in the morning and 10 articles at lunch, why is the optimal time to send your friends articles some _other_ time during the day?

<comment><USER13> Does the average person do that? I've seen nothing to suggest they do, except you might.

Also, when is morning? people are in lots of different timezones that are following companies and celebs.

<comment><USER12> What I do has nothing to do with the article. It is the article claiming that.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla crashes into wall during auto-park, Tesla: Beta feature, so owner's fault - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/johnblackjr/status/1128330292098285568 <comment><AUTHOR> What I don't understand (and maybe I'm just naive) is how it's legal to test a so-called "beta feature" \-- which, if it fails, clearly can be dangerous (lucky no one was hurt) -- on customers in a live environment, vs using its own test drivers at the very least? I can't imagine this being legal with any other form of transportation (or just large equipment; they don't even sell lightbulbs that aren't CE certified).

<comment><USER2> Of course Tesla tests things itself with its own drivers. What they can't do is replicate every single one of the unusual corner cases that people encounter in the real world.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but that's true of all companies. Imagine a drug company put a drug on the market that might kill your or leave you crippled if you don't match the results they had on their 3 test patients, and them telling you "That's on you, the drug is a beta".

<comment><USER4> That's a bad example, because drugs typically have all kinds of warnings about negative effects. They certainly test on more than 3 patients, and they won't tell you the drug is a beta, but I'm sure they will still claim they are not responsible, because they warned you about very small chance of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IMO this is pure FUD, no actual correspondence with Tesla to back it up.

It would be silly for Tesla to argue that it's driver's fault because "beta". Every other car manufacturer will say it's driver's responsibility when using autopark, full stop.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be interesting to get non Twitter, more in depth information on this.

Beta software that has safety implications on a car seems strange.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few reporters who reached out to the poster via twitter -- I'd expect follow-up stories over the next couple days (with them at least asking Telsa for comment; no guarantee they'll respond, of course, but would really like to see what Tesla says).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> don't you sign a liability waiver when entering Tesla beta program?

<comment><USER8> Tesla still has to meet vehicle safety regulations. It's a friggin' car not the Windows Insider Program. No one dies if my PC crashes.

<comment><USER9> This is what happens when you are trying to do manufacturing "Silicon Valley" style

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think signing up for beta software on a car like this is a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just glad no one was hurt.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm kind of interested how anything even could be a Beta feature in a car's context - or atleast a safety critical feature like this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Do people have any personal accountability anymore? "The company will protect me" is such a foolish thought process, especially when you're playing with beta features that have risks.

This to me isn't all that different than the guy who crashed his Tesla while watching a movie behind the wheel. Culpability. Assumption of risk. But-for causation. All the usual legal theories apply.

<comment><USER14> >Do people have any personal accountability anymore?

Yes.

The problem is that people shouldn't have to be accountable for failure-modes that they in no way have the training to predict, understand, or recover from.

The FDA explains the specific risks of a drug. They don't just say "This drug can cause issues.".

Hand-waving all corporate fault by _admitting_ that your corporation is perfectly okay with beta software being on the public road as long as the car owner assumes responsibility is not a solution to the liability question.

A responsible beta program would 1) not be on the public highway in any means 2) require the participants to have a high familiarity with the product and the technical know-how to be effective members of the testing community; which should include training on not only error and incident reporting, but failure recovery and failure scope.

It's perfectly reasonable that a user would operate a mechanism incorrectly when their only advice is "Good luck, it's experimental!".</comment></comment>


Cancer patients are being denied drugs, even with prescriptions and insurance - <AUTHOR> https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article232478212.html <comment><USER2> One entirely maddening thing is that the ACA was labeled as having "death panels" that would decide who lives and dies. That phrase was powerfully effective in making large group of Americans strongly oppose the ACA. Even if they knew nothing else about the ACA, they knew they didn't want death panels.

But as this article demonstrates, if we care to use the inflammatory "death panels" label, we already have them.

It makes me despondent that we can ever get to a place where our politicians can make rational, informed decisions about complex issues requiring multiple trade-offs. Cheap political rhetoric is not only easy to sell, stoking fear and tribalism is a winning strategy to getting reelected. 30 years ago most voters didn't bother to read a paper and were simply uninformed; now most voters are actively misinformed.

<comment><USER3> "But as this article demonstrates, if we care to use the inflammatory "death panels" label, we already have them."

It's not inflammatory when it's true. When the government runs our healthcare, choices are removed and someone else gets to decide if you should get surgery needed or not...and many times this is life or death.

At least now, if a cancer patient gets denied drugs, they can go to another doctor or get a second opinion.

All of my elderly relatives live in Canada and come over the border for any major surgery. This is mostly because the wait times are sometimes in the years..when they can just get private care in the US and get it done in a matter of weeks.

Doctors are also usually maxed out when it comes to patients, so individual care is lacking and they usually just want to try to push you out the door.

I also feel like I should have a say in someone's behavior, if I'm paying for their healthcare with my tax dollars: smoking, drinking, risky behavior, etc.

I've lived in countries with universal healthcare and the quality is sub-par compared to the US/private care. Sure private care can be improved, but it shouldn't be ripped out and replaced.

<comment><USER4> >I've lived in countries with universal healthcare and >the quality is sub-par compared to the US/private care.

My experience has been the exact opposite. America's healthcare business ruined my life. As a result I have no insurance and have lost the "privilege" to BUY said American healthcare. I struggle with low income options and programs, all insufficient. The only good care I ever got was in Europe. My experiences with social hospitals and doctors was much better than in the USA where it counts. Places weren't often as fancy looking, but the care was superb. Even the private systems in those countries was far more affordable. a few hundred for an MRI etc rather than a few thousand.

Healthcare and education in America can bankrupt you. That isn't something people in countries with social options have to fear...despite any drawbacks since no place is perfect. I don't know if Americans who are so opposed to doing things like the rest of the first world just need to believe it's always better here so they ignore the benefits...or if they just haven't had to face this issue personally and are incapable of caring until they do. But I do know I had a future and now I do not...and there is no net to catch me or care. Whenever I see comments like yours I just get so upset realizing how it's an unwinnable battle in this country because of these ingrained beliefs.

<comment><USER5> To add to your anecdote: I have a bill laying around where the asking price for the mri was $21000.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I was quoted 3500usd cash price recently and that was with the "generous" cash pay/uninsured discount of 10% and a lower income community hospital. Needless to say I did not get the scan. That's how it goes here. I only paid about 150usd in a Central European nation for a more advanced 3d version, and that was in the PRIVATE for-profit system there. American healthcare is a tragedy that I don't see changing sadly since so many people fight any positive change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm having exactly these problems, with exactly these companies: CVS and BC Anthem. Doctor writes prescriptions; some are limited in doses, some delayed, some with no copay, some priced barbarically, and some flat out refused. Then the doctor's office has wizards that help advocate and sometimes that works, sometimes there's a delay, and sometimes never.

In all cases, the patient suffers. They are already facing a medical condition, maybe serious, plus stress from missing work and home life, stress about the future, stress for paying for it all, and then along comes these sharks who will double it all with more stress and worry and anger. Then on top of that they don't get all the types and amounts of medicine their doctor actually wants, based on science and experience, so they will get inferior treatment in every way.

Yes we need to cut the price gouging. Adding friction at this interface is not the way.

<comment><USER7> Was talking with my endocrinologist. She said insurance companies are now limiting the amount of insulin she can prescribe. She'll have a patient who's been doing fine with 30 units a month and the insurance company will cut it to 25. And then to 20.

My theory is specialists, hospitals, insurance and drug companies are trying to swipe everything that isn't nailed down before it all blows up.

<comment><USER8> FYI, a 10mL vial of U-100 insulin is 1000 units. I don't think you can buy less than a 3mL vial (300 units) which is a pen cartridge and I think even those are only sold as 5-packs.

I've never heard of an insurance company trying to reduce an insulin dose. They definitely pushed back on the number of test strips they would cover (e.g. 5 strips/day vs 7/day) where a prior auth was needed to get coverage at the higher quantity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This happens across the board.

I have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. The barriers to getting a prescription for an effective (and expensive) biologic medication can be crazy.

When I've been forced to use a "specialty pharmacy", they require that the medication be shipped overnight (it has to be refrigerated) which is clearly more expensive than picking it up at a neighborhood pharmacy, that shipment has to be arranged every month, which means a phone call, waiting on hold, passing a quiz on my condition, surviving attempts to upsell supplies I don't need. They also won't ship "too soon", which inevitably means that the monthly refills slightly more slowly than once a month

I've also had insurance demand that I take ineffective but cheap medication for 3 months before I can get the stuff that works -- ostensibly they want to see if the cheap methotrexate (daily nausea, waves of fatigue) is effective.

In the 11 years since my diagnosis I've managed to be regularly on an available effective medication about 60% of the time, mostly because of this nonsense. 40% of the time I'm in pain

<comment><USER10> A patient was on Humira then went on medicare. Medicare would not cover Humira and this patient had to go on Remicade.

The difference? Humira is able to be given by self at home. Remicade requires an infusion by a nurse.

<comment><USER11> I was once dating a woman who had vertically contracted Hepatitis C during her birth. We had an accident before I had completed my normal vaccination course. The first-line treatment in those cases is a dose of immunoglobulin containing the relevant antibodies.

My insurance gave two choices: pay $800 out of pocket for the drug at any pharmacy that carries it (zero coverage offered, no recourse), take it to my doctor's office by hand, and get it injected there; or go to the ER and have it done one-stop there (at a cost of $300 to me and at least $3000 to them).

Fine, guys. It's your money...

<comment><USER12> _Fine, guys. It 's your money..._

Except it's not their money. It's all of our money, as the whole point of insurance is pooling resources to hedge against any individual risk. Not that I blame you - the implementation of some policies is completely asinine.

<comment><USER13> The only fair way to distribute rare goods is to the highest bidder

<comment><USER14> This is landing squarely in Poe's law territory.

Notwithstanding, this is only possibly true under a model where everyone initially has equal opportunity. A weak requirement that is almost certainly insufficient, and yet one we have already failed miserably at.

<comment><USER13> Distribution of rare goods and services to the highest bidder is fair because it puts everyone on an even playing field with the same rules. What other method of distribution achieves this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're an employer in California and want to choose a provider that will not have to deal with this you might want to consider offering Kaiser to your employees. There's benefits and drawbacks, but one of the big benefits is that they're vertically integrated and the doctors, labs, pharmacies are all part of the same organization. I would think that would help avoid this specific type of situation.

The big drawback is that your employees would need to live near Kaiser facilities. In the Bay Area they are everywhere though and easy to get to. Making use of any doctor or service outside of the Kaiser network is probably not covered.

<comment><USER16> Kaiser's system works better than a lot of others, but for me having to drive 40 minutes for a prescription is outrageous when I have 20 other pharmacies in a 15 minute radius.

<comment><USER17> If the prescriptions are just for fairly routine drugs (diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc), I've found that most of them are cheaper paying the cash price at Walmart than the insured price at Kaiser, or paying the GoodRx price at Safeway.

What I do now is have my Kaiser doctor give me an old-fashioned written prescription on paper, take it to the Kaiser pharmacy that is in the same building as the doctor's office, and ask them what my out of pocket cost will be. While they are figuring that out, I look up my non-Kaiser options in the GoodRx app on my phone. When I get the cost from the Kaiser pharmacy, I can then decide where to actually have it filled.

It was similar before I had Kaiser. The Walmart cash price or the GoodRx price was often less than my copay with Premera or LifeWise if I used insurance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't wait for the US health system to make it to the UK.

<comment><USER19> Something similar used to happen here with NICE guidance not recommending use of the meds, which is why the cancer drugs fund was set up.

After spending a billion or so on meds we found out that they mostly don't increase length of life and also cause nasty side effects. [https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2097](https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2097)

<comment><USER18> Can you explain in a bit more detail how NICE guidelines are similar to what is described in the article?

<comment><USER20> UK has a set of standard guidelines for how to treat diseases with proven drugs, and only pays for those (like the insurance company in the article being rigid about its guidelines).

People complained that their doctors weren't allowed to go off-track and make up special treatments for their special patients that went against guidelines (like the patients in the article).

Because it's political suicide to deny "What the doctor thinks is the best" when it comes to dying cancer patients, the UK government set up a special fund of money to let doctors go against the guidelines. It accounted for ~1/6th of all cancer drug costs.

It turns out that this special fund was largely a waste of money, the guidelines were fine all along, and patients were harmed by getting treatments that don't work.

Despite having our hearts in the right places, patients were harmed, and funds were taken out of some other (proven) part of the health care system. But because we tried to help, we won't bring this up very often.

<comment><USER18> And this relates to the article how?

Ultimate, what is described is an insurer tying to minimize the payout on a claim same as they have been doing from the dawn of time except here it's particularly nasty as people suffer and die.

<comment><USER20> The beef in the article seems to be "We're not paying for it, because it's not in our guidelines" vs. "Doctor thinks this patient is more special than the guidelines"

Where in the article says that the insurance provider was trying to minimize the payout on the claim?

Insurance companies _really_ hate paying for things that don't work (or have a low likelihood of working). Even more than paying for something expensive that works.

The article is really annoying, because Treatment A didn't work, and they wanted to skip Tx B and go right to Tx C. Tx C worked, but the article never named any of the drugs, so we can't evaluate the validity of this guideline. We just have one anecdote of one event where doctor was ultimately right (because nobody runs to the LA Times when they were in-the-wrong).

<comment><USER18> > _" "So we get a phone call here to my staff saying that the pharmacist – not > the doctor, but the pharmacist – to the PBM called and said they are denying > the drug."

The reason given: The patient should have surgery to remove his kidney first."_

<comment><USER20> Notice that the doctor didn't disagree with that being a course of treatment for this disease. Their response was that the patient was too ill for that surgery - a detail that wasn't known to the PBM.

Either the issue is:

1) Kidney removal shouldn't be a course of treatment (unknown based on the details provided). Keep in mind, the same insurer would be paying for this, and it isn't cheap, so it's not as ridiculous as it sounds.

2) Patient status with regards to surgery wasn't communicated to the payor, but should be a part of that process. Or it was a part of the process, but it was omitted.

3) Kidney removal should be a course of treatment, but the doctors didn't want to go through with it anyway, and made up some reason after-the-fact to continue to support their beliefs.

<comment><USER21> > Notice that the doctor didn't disagree with that being a course of treatment > for this disease.

Yes, but having a PBM tell a doctor that their diagnosis is wrong and try to change their professional recommendation, without ever having seen the patient, and with unknown qualifications, is downright evil and probably malpractice.

We have doctors for a reason. They took a hippocratic oath to do no harm, and allowing unqualified people who took no such oath to tell someone to "just take out the kidney" is abhorrent.

<comment><USER19> You place a lot of trust in doctors.

Knee arthroscopy is a good example where doctors _knew_ for a fact that they were helping patients until we ran trials using sham surgery and we found out it doesn't help some patients at all.

[https://www.painscience.com/biblio/fascinating-landmark- stud...](https://www.painscience.com/biblio/fascinating-landmark-study-of- placebo-surgery-for-knee-osteoarthritis.html)

[https://doctorskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/08/placebo- surgery-4...](https://doctorskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/08/placebo- surgery-4-knee-arthroscopy-in.html)

PBMs are probably bad, but we need some organisation to look at the evidence and say whether something works or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The fact that you need a prescription at all for many of these drugs is crazy.

I don't agree with drug laws related to addictive substances. But at least they make sense. Even laws related to antibiotics. There's potential for abuse, so the controllers at least have a logical (if not reasonable) argument.

But what possible purpose does it serve to require a prescription for insulin? Or chemo drugs which have no pleasant effect?

The blatant racket isn't even questioned when things like this happen.

We should be lobbying to remove the need for prescriptions from most drugs and to remove liability for drug sales from pharmacies and other third parties. This way, they don't have a say. And they shouldn't.

America is a place where the 0.1% probability there is a negative reaction means 25% of the population can't access medications. And they have the chutzpah to say it's for our own benefit. Legislative capture at it's worst.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a really rare cancer, and it didn't get detected until I hit stage IV and it started shattering my bones. Thankfully I lived 2 miles from a cancer research hospital that actually has a specialist in this type of organ cancer.

My current treatment regime is based on a research paper. My insurance initially denied me treatment based on "an expert in the field" and stupidly listed the doctors name. I looked her up and she was a podiatrist...

For the most part, my treatment is dialed in and mostly working. But I had a solid three months of fighting with the insurance company to get all of the medications, and I do the monthly phone calls to three different specialty pharmacies to get all of the various things that keep me able to walk.

Its a crazy hard problem because one of my medications is a "failed" cancer drug. Tens of millions of dollars worth of R&D, several clinical trials, and it turns out it doesn't work on most common cancers. (And even on cancers it does work on, its usually used as a Hail Mary play, at EOL because it might give someone a few more weeks, maybe). It costs roughly 40k a month, and I might be stuck on it for the rest of my days.

<comment><USER20> Anecdotes are great and all, but we still don't know if the textbook treatment would have worked better or not.

Certainly those that failed with the exotic treatment plans won't be around to complain about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The American health care system is a perfect system.

Its product is perfect, the only alternative the customer really has is to live in discomfort or die.

Its prices are fully unregulated.

The care providers are fully utilized and can therefore practice pretty much the prices they want.

The insurance companies are consolidating and can therefore practice the prices they want, while providing an ever dropping level of service. Consolidation with pharmacies even give them a way to control the distribution and a way to recover some of their disbursement.

Pharmaceutical producers are protecting their markets through patents that give them monopolies, which combined with a total absence of governmental overlook lets them practice the prices they want. The more the patient needs the medicine, the pricier drugs can get. The incentive is then that the deadliest the disease is, the priciest the drug gets.

The only balance that should exist with insurance weighing for lower treatment costs ends up being lower reimbursement and more borderline control on the patient.

Truly this is a perfect system, ever more efficient at extracting money from people suffering. All the incentives are in, just not weighing in the favor of patients.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can we agree to flag all those sick health insurance stories with a [US] prefix in the title ?

</comment><comment><USER26> Just because they assume their Blue Cross policy is "the best" doesn't make it so. Multiple medical professionals during my current cancer journey (in the Fresno area, as it turns out) actually referred to Blue Cross as "the worst" for the reasons given in this article. My insurer, Cigna, has been great. Also, isn't it possible that the cCare doctor really was not following the right protocol and prescribing things improperly? I'm not going through cCare because I didn't like what I saw there.

<comment><USER27> I'm absolutely not defending the PBMs or what happened in this case, but $500/mo for that age group is the junk end of the insurance market. It's unfortunate, but they certainly don't have good insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Having a national health care system administered by the government is the ultimate monopoly. It necessitates a gigantic bureaucracy, which will decide what you get and what you don't get according to their standardized rules.

Since it will be impossible to provide everyone with the best health care, it'll get allocated according to bureaucratic rules, not what you or your doctor want.

These allocations will inevitably be done based on political decisions, and how politically connected you are.

<comment><USER29> As someone who lives in a system with national healthcare I can say it's not a problem like you state. We have both private and public healthcare, and You can use both or just the public one. If you have a life threatening illness then you get priority treatment over illnesses that are more of a inconvenience. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better then having admin people deny you treatment based on cost alone.

<comment><USER28> Let's say you need surgery. No two surgeons are alike. Who gets the best one? Who gets the worst? Who gets neither when they're all booked up?

In national healthcare, it isn't you who decides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is nothing new and is the process by which insurance companies reduce drug costs.

Insurers come up with formularies that favor less expensive drugs first. If those don't work, the patient can get the more expensive drugs.

Manufacturers negotiate formulary agreements. They might offer a rebate to move their product to first line use.

In therapeutic areas like psoriasis, the rebates can exceed 50% since it's such a competitive class with more than a dozen products.

<comment><USER31> What's new is the application of step therapy to cancer care. Per the article, this was introduced into Medicare by HHS under the Trump administration.

<comment><USER30> That's true, cancer was generally unmanaged in the past.

However, some control is needed. I was talking to an insurer once and he mentioned a doctor who had prescribed a drug for patient where there was no evidence it worked. When he asked the doctor why, he said "well I have to give them something". This was a $10,000 per month drug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Instead of fighting them like they did, why not just go along with them and order the medications, throw them out just to get escalated to the right one? When I had to deal with CVS Caremark I frequently had to order things I didn't need because it was part of their "protocol". Rather than fight them, I would just go along with them because I knew fighting a company like CVS is pointless. I just threw out the stuff I didn't need so I could get what I needed out of them.

When navigating systems like these you have to find ways of looking like the 90% even if you're in the 10%. Any exceptions to their protocols will be met with resistance and delays as you have to make your way to some review board vs. dealing with the mindless lower level staff who have no decision making ability.

It's what happens when you have executive management with MBA's that have come from running customer service, consumer finance and call centers running health care.

<comment><USER33> But won't that cause a delay, even if you ignore the cost, since I'm sure they won't give the subsequent medications unless the time period in which you are supposed to do the previous treatments had passed?

That delay is what can be the difference between life and death for some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> These PBMs need to be eliminated along with the insurance companies that deal with them. The blame is two fold and this can be seen as a conspiracy to commit murder. Maybe not legally, of course, as these companies (pharmacy and insurance) are clearly allowed to murder people without consequence. Insurance companies whole business plan is based around this notion of providing the absolute minimum care when a patient is really sick and needs it the most. Who'd have thought there is another way to die in America just so pharmacies save a few dollars? It's widely known about insurance companies. What other companies have such legal power of death, I wonder?

</comment><comment><USER35> It would be very funny if the managers or their relatives who promote these policies will meet cancer themselves. Then they will feel the human price of their profits increase.

<comment><USER4> You are getting backlash because it seems mean to wish suffering on anyway, and never funny, but honestly I have learned this is the only way most people acquire empathy, though personal suffering. Even then a large number still find a way to blame others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is called "preauthorization" aka "preauth".

Not only does it damage patients' health, but it increases physicians' non- reimbursed costs.

<comment><USER36> Oops, I was brain dead. It's "prior authorization".

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalMemes/comments/cla50g/medi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalMemes/comments/cla50g/medical_bill_meme_this_is_why_im_voting_for/)

</comment><comment><USER38> > pharmacy benefit managers

The qualifications to become a pharmacy benefit manager include a bachelor's degree, at least five years of experience as a pharmacist, and five years in health plan pharmaceutical management.

So a bozo pharmacist can trump a doctor's judgment.

<comment><USER39> A pharmacy benefit manager is not a person, it's an organization. In this organization are usually doctors and pharmacists (who have doctorate degrees also), who review medicinal claims based on the policies set forth by the payer (sometimes an employer, sometimes an insurance company, sometimes the government).

They also don't "trump" a doctor's judgment, they simply state whether or not the claim for medicine is covered under the plan rules.

<comment><USER40> > They also don't "trump" a doctor's judgment, they simply state whether or > not the claim for medicine is covered under the plan rules.

I think it's incorrect to say they don't trump the prescribing doctors judgement just because they have a company policy they're following. They also have the ability to override the policy. This means they are making a decision and when they default to what the policy says, if that goes against the doctors judgement then that is a decision they made to trump that doctors judgement.

This kind of "just following orders" logic is used a lot by people who want to absolve themselves of the responsibilities of their choices.

<comment><USER39> >They also have the ability to override the policy.

From my understanding, they do not. At least not outside of a certain margin of error, since the payer (for example a state government or employer) would then blame the PBM for approving payment something it wasn't supposed to approve payment for, and hence seek reimbursement from the PBM or cancel its contract and go with another PBM.

<comment><USER40> I've had specialty medicine approved that very clearly goes against policy at different phases of the review process (including immediately) on different insurance plans. So they do seem to me to have this power.

<comment><USER39> I can't answer for why they would violate the policies they are supposed to be enforcing, but I do no know PBMs get audited by governments and penalized for improperly approving medications for Medicaid recipients.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why there is little hole in airplane windows? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-little-hole-in-airplane-windows-there-for?share=1 <comment><USER2> Much discussion and the raising (and in most cases answering) or related issues can be found here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9633051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9633051)</comment>


Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self driving car - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/12/google-has-reportedly-stopped-developing-its-own-self-driving-car/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate, most of the discussion is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165221)

<comment><USER3> Actually, this submission was an hour earlier, and has the correct title and no url clutter. Yet for some reason the other submission got a lot more upvotes.

<comment><USER4> Often happens. When we do moderation things we try to privilege the earliest submission of a story but it isn't always possible.

We'll eventually get around to working on a more sophisticated way of handling duplicate submissions, but the simplicity of the current approach (i.e. allow a few reposts if a story hasn't had significant attention yet) has much to commend it.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps the algorithm could be tweaked so that simply voting on a story pushes it closer towards the top of the homepage.

I always search before submitting, and just upvote an existing story if someone has already submitted it (unless it's a from different source, which may get more traction due to being better written).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So they've stopped working on their own self-driving car from scratch, but they haven't stopped working on self-driving cars.

They just want to progress to semi-autonomous cars with a 3rd party instead of leapfrogging to fully autonomous built in-house, which makes sense.

The headline seemed a bit more ominous...

<comment><USER6> I think the idea is that Alphabet will be spinning this department to become their own company. This means they need to have a product that they can sell and not have the bottomless well of funding they previously saw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reeks of Ruth Porat's cost cutting.

<comment><USER8> Or it reeks of "turns out, building cars at scale is really hard, and we'd have to compete directly with experienced companies for uncertain gain". Partnerships or M&A are a much better way to go here then software companies trying to build car factories from scratch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They are trying to trick Apple into stopping :)</comment>


Ask HN: Online Contract Law? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a way to make contract law more straight forward? Something like computer code with explicit syntax.
And the natural segue would be, could one imagine a way to enforce these contracts online outside of any given court system? Perhaps a social contract abstraction on top of a given judicial jurisdiction.
I can't imagine this is a new idea. <comment><USER2> Explore the field of computational legal studies, especially the research coming out U. of Michigan from Dean Katz.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Thanks. It looks like his name may in fact be Daniel Katz. Is that the same guy?

<comment><USER2> Yes, I misremembered, it's been a couple of years since I met him. Here's his blog, though you've probably found it already: [http://computationallegalstudies.com/](http://computationallegalstudies.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Automated API Testing - <AUTHOR> I find Postman is great for API testing during development, but is there any tool for automating API integration testing as part of a CI setup?
Of course such a tool would probably need to work within the corporate firewall in order to access dev endpoints, perhaps also be able to interrogate internal DBs to verify data correctness. And of course automatically running tests and reporting/failing builds if desired post-build.
I will build a tool that does this if:
a) Such tool doesn't already exist.
b) There are enough comments here to suggest demand from people willing to pay for this. <comment><USER2> Postman founder here. Postman do automated API integration testing using the newman command line companion [1] for Postman. You can build and run your tests in Postman and then integrate them with your CI system.

1\. Newman: [https://www.getpostman.com/docs/newman_intro](https://www.getpostman.com/docs/newman_intro)

</comment><comment><USER3> To me, the best reason for a developer to build this sort of tool is because it solves their own issue [or by proxy that of their customer/user/client]. The reason is that there is a natural pressure to build the least amount of functionality that gets the job done and there is less tendency to speculatively develop features for which there might be little or no value based on imagination about how a not yet existent user might use the tool.

The best place to sell such a tool is to organizations that are unwilling or unable to develop such a tool in house but have a need for it. That's B2B sales and determining the demand in that market is probably best done by talking to people in relevant businesses where there might be a need.

Which is a round about way of saying that that the number of responses in this thread may not be indicative of the size, potential, or enthusiasm of the relevant market.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://apiblueprint.org/tools.html#](https://apiblueprint.org/tools.html#) lists a couple of testing tools. There are also tools that work with the Swagger/OpenAPI specification [https://github.com/jolicode/jane- openapi](https://github.com/jolicode/jane-openapi) If I remember correctly Postman can export test cases as well, so building a service that runs those should be possible, similar to saucelabs.com/selenium.</comment>


What's common about the hackers? - <AUTHOR>

Are they all nerds? Dont they have life beyond computers. Ofcourse generlisations are for the noobs, but there still will be lot of "commons".<p>1. One thing i noticed common among lot of hackers is that they all have profound views about things sorrounding them, but they never let it out. <comment><USER2> They aren't so quick to label themselves

</comment><comment><USER3> "profound views but never let it out" - sounds like an intp to me (<http://www.intp.org/faq.html>). there's a chance there's a lot of intps around these places. intps like to hack, i know i do. probably some intjs as well - they get more stuff done. being business and such, there's probably some entjs around here too - who wouldn't fit that description at all. sprinkles of other types is my guess, but im guessing a lot of 'engineering' and 'executive' types.

detailed profile: <http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> very interesting {:}

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hackers don't accept the reality they're presented with. They learn how to change it.

</comment><comment><USER5> > "commons"

I'm not sure if you were looking for help on this one, but "similarities" is the word most Americans would use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was just a way of expression my friend(s)

<comment><USER5> Ah, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They are almost universally dudes.

<comment><AUTHOR> they all fix

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> they like technology.

thats about it.</comment>


Ask HN: How can industrial process be automated? - <AUTHOR> There are several industries where still people use their hands to produce goods manually, how can we automate those processes? Are there companies who can automate manual process? <comment><USER2> Every process can already be automated, it's just a question of whether someone wants to pay for it.</comment>


California police probing alleged online BLM threats made by former officers - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Maybe: Shaun King: A private LEO group on Facebook is literally plotting to kill me [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23659139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23659139) ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have a link to more info?</comment>


New York State Senate Passes Anti-Airbnb Bill - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/17/airbnb-new-york-legislation/ <comment><USER2> I think what a lot of people are ignoring in big cities demand for affordable apartments is much higher than supply. What I see happening a lot, is that people are renting apartments just to put it up on airbnb. I really don't think its a deal with hotels and more to do with this problem of available affordable housing.</comment>


I want to work with more women - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dwolla.com/i-want-to-work-with-more-women/

<comment><USER2> _sighs_ Look, I would not want to work somewhere if there was even the slightest chance that I got the job on account of my gender. I do not want to be some progressive nice guy's feel-good story, I want to be good at what I do. So while I do appreciate this enthusiasm for helping women succeed in tech, I respectfully would ask that the best way to help is to mentor, teach, and advise -- not to make us feel like we've become someone's pet diversity project. I mean, I want to be a great coder someday, not a great woman coder, y'know?

In short: help us tap into resources and conferences and classes and seminars where we can hone our skills, and we can take it from there. (Etsy's recent program to develop more female engineers is probably the gold standard to emulate in this regard: [http://www.fastcolabs.com/3005681/how-hack-broken- gender-dyn...](http://www.fastcolabs.com/3005681/how-hack-broken-gender- dynamics-workplace) ) Help us network and hack and build shit. Submit pull requests to our lonely little open source projects. Call other guys out publicly if they act like jerks to us at conferences. Just...please don't blog about how you wish we would come keep you company at your start-up, as if we were elusive butterflies you want to pin to your wall.

Also? Every time the "women in tech" conversation happens, the elephant in the living room that no one likes to mention is that women tend to be the primary caregivers for their kids (or later, for their elderly parents, or disabled siblings, etc.). This is true of techie women too, and it totally has an effect on the kinds of jobs we take, and when. Most techie women I know have young kids at home or are planning to have them within the next few years before our biological clocks run out. (I'm 34 and I have two, ages 5 and 2.) Does a start-up like Dwolla offer childcare credits or benefits? Onsite daycare? Emergency nanny services? Because a lot of big companies do this, but a lot of startups have no idea that these benefits even exist, much less offer them to their employees.

If I know I'm going to be going back to work full-time after having children, what kind of a company do you think I'm going to look at first, a traditional big company or a start-up? Which one is going to likely offer me better hours and more stability, at a time when my income (and health benefits) are really crucial to other people who are depending upon it? And that's to say nothing of the culture at the company. Do I want to work at some start-up that advertises beer nights and paid company dinners as if they're obvious perks, when I honestly look at them and think that ugh, this is yet more time I would have to spend away from my kids.

In short, our priorities may not mesh perfectly with your priorities. :-)

<comment><USER3> He really just asked for applications, which were lacking. Not a whiff of any 'quota' or special consideration - just wanting applications.

Why do you think they are missing? Women have degrees; women don't apply to program computers. Can you add something to the conversation?

<comment><USER2> You mean, add something besides the concrete examples I gave of why women might not want to work at a start-up, or the first-hand experiences I noted being the exact demographic he's talking to/about?

(Oh HN, don't ever change.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, yes, like that. But brushing off attempts to hire women as never quite the right attitude, never quite the right job, sounds like making excuses.

There are a lot of women. Either few (none) like working at startups, or there's something about the application process that is filtering half the population out.

You can just complain that every job offends you somehow, and it might, but what about all the rest who aren't like you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 10 women out of 40 are women is prrrrobably a higher proportion than most tech companies, no?

This strikes me as being a little bit...weird, and could maybe put women off..? Perhaps it could be explained in a more robust manner than saying they have excellent planning skills and have "exceptional minds" as if it's some sort of universal truth. It comes across as sounding artificial and...weird.

</comment><comment><USER5> Young men and women of HN: If you apply to Ben Milne's company, he won't be particularly excited if he discovers you have a penis. If he discovers have a vagina, though, he'll be _much_ more excited.

Good for you, Ben.

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, it's almost always hyper-privileged men who triumphantly make these (and similar) pronouncements. And as always, by urinating on lower-status men, Ben risks very little social standing; his potential social benefits, however, are enormous.</comment>


Implementing MapReduce as a monad - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/MapReduce_as_a_monad

<comment><USER2> It seems odd to want mappers and reducers to have the same type. Map/reduce is popular for limiting the scope of computations so they can execute in parallel with shared-nothing, which imposes very different roles on them. A mapper should be a pure function which takes a single input value (it can't rely on seeing more of the input than that) and produces a collection (not necessarily a list but some monad like that which the framework can join over) of values having an equivalence relation. A reducer should be a pure function which takes a collection of all values in one equivalence class (it can rely on seeing all of them from any mapper, but not any other values) and produces whatever (again, some collection monad so the framework can join over the collection-of-collections).</comment>


Tesla's Autopilot involved in first autonomous car fatality: Factors explained - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/man-dies-while-driven-by-tesla-autopilot/ <comment><USER2> I hate to speak ill of the departed. but none of the comments explore this point:

This guy sounds like a bit of an overly-solicitous Tesla fanboy and/or sycophant, who, possibly, having once "used this car to its full extent" in the prior avoidance situation, this time intentionally failed to take over control in order to test the autopilot, perhaps with the hope of getting another great avoidance success story and youtube video and/or to ingratiate himself with a celebrity like Elon Musk.

Some people can get a bit too cultishly infatuated with technology/social media attention/techno big-shots. We must think with our minds as well as our hearts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Autonomous car futurist Brad Templeton talks about the technical factors behind the fatal crash and discusses implications for the autonomous car industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tesla isn't autonomous (yet). It's just simple autopilot-like helper.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's an advert for this guy's sensor technology.</comment>


The Future Of Social Commerce [SLIDE DECK] - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-social-commerce-slide-deck-22013-2?op=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, but such speculation. Oh boy.</comment>


Why aren't children taught to touch-type at school? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/6139246/Why-arent-children-taught-to-touch-type-at-school.html

<comment><USER2> Generally agree, but I don't think it's any harder to learn touch typing after two finger typing than starting touch typing from scratch.

<comment><USER3> For me, it just started to work naturally once my parents (finally) got a computer 9 years ago. I thought you just spend some time in front of a computer and it starts to happen...</comment></comment>