It's Instant - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dwolla.com/its-instant/ <comment><USER2> You pay $3/month for the privilege of allowing them to front you cash for up to a month. If you are late, they charge you $5. No broken legs, no threats, just $5.

According to one of the images 'simple terms apply'. What are those terms and why aren't they listed right now? That seems shady to make a big announcement and not clearly list all the terms.

I've got a few questions: How much cash can I borrow? What happens if I'm late multiple months? What prevents me from closing my account and just walking away?

I don't know, this seems like an awful idea to me. Rife for abuse. Dwolla will be one the receiving end of a lot of fraud really quickly and will be spending all their time and resources chasing down deadbeats.

UPDATE: A 3rd party has more details than their own site [1]. Up to $500. Still seems rife for fraud to me because now they are going to have to chase down a lot of people for only $500.

If my credit is good and my money management is sound, why would I need to pay $3 a month for the privilege of allowing me to get a loan for up to $500?

[1] [http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/12/dwolla- introduces-...](http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/12/dwolla-introduces- instant-gives-users-instant-access-to-line-of-credit)

<comment><USER3> Because they're avoiding "credit" entirely.

I suspect this is the start of their own implementation of "credit", and they're comfortable with losing some money at the beginning. In the long run, the traction they gain from the good customers could/should be worth more than the money they lose.

For the consumer, $3 on $500 is incredibly low interest.

<comment><USER4> $3/month on $500 isn't 'incredibly' low: it's $36/year, on a net carried balance that's probably close to zero at least as often as it's close to the maximum $500.

If you could time it just right, so that your balance was $499 29 days of every month, and $0 the one day that it needs to be, the effective rate would be around 7%, a fair but not great consumer credit rate. But if your balance is often closer to zero, and you ever trigger the late fee, the effective rate becomes much, much higher.

It does compare favorably to foreign-ATM access fees.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for saying what I was just about to say. The real point here is that there is that no reason, for a responsible consumer (ie: someone who isn't running into debt each month), to use this 'service'. Since it is tailored to people who have good credit, I don't see how this is going to be popular at all.

<comment><USER5> Because the point is far more than just a credit line.

The name is "instant".

How exactly is everyone missing the entire "instant" part of the feature.

Instant costs $3/mo, and includes the credit line feature.

But the fronting of cash isn't the ONLY feature in 'instant', and thus not the only thing you're being charged for!

I like the idea of instant transactions -- a lot. If I could use Dwolla instead of a debit card, you better believe I'd pay $3/mo to have all of my transactions post immediately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (I'll just copy my answer from reddit below)

That was an odd article from northern european perspective.

You really haven't had direct bank payments via web in US before this? We had those before web credit card payments and they are implemented by the banks themselves (it's a standard here, I have actually implemented some of this stuff with our company)

The article also talks about rent payments.. You don't have automatic recurring payment option in your web bank interface? can you make payments from one bank account to other via web interface at all?

(then someone answered that there are not bank-to-bank transfers or more advanced stuff like direct payments don't exists and I continued...)

Wow that's odd.

Just for comparison, people here would probably revolt if transfering money from one account to other would cost something. That's how everyone here pays bills. Before people would go to banks and make transfer form account to other to pay bills there, some 10-20 years ago banks themselves started to move all this to their web interfaces to reduce the need for physical locations (basically to cut costs).

The whole europe is now moving to "SEPA" system where all bank accounts are standardized so from now on this can be done europe-wide.

Sepa also has this new "e-payment" system that makes all kinds of things like direct billing possible EU-wide.

[http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/article.cfm?articles_u...](http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/article.cfm?articles_uuid=BCFC9AFD- BDA2-FC9C-B434859EC6A9CC95)

<comment><USER7> i feel you. in 3rd world Brazil we had all that.

here, i kid you not: \- they are just getting chips on credit cards \- you pay your credit card that your own bank manages by transfering money from one account to credit card account... and that can take DAYS to show up. so I usually have to pay my credit card some 20 days before i would. \- most bills came with an envelope for you to mail your check. \- most people i know pay annuity on cc.

<comment><USER8> Not Brazilian here, but I wouldn't call Brazil Third World, and especially not their banking system.

<comment><USER7> it was a thong in cheek joke (which i can make because i'm brazilian :) ok that was another bad joke, but this one i blame on seinfield.

anyway, i wouldn't consider it's banking system so good if you account it's the most profiting bank system in the world, if the fees arena.

it's modern, ok. but i wouldn't go singing love balads just yet for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When Dwolla does this for consumer to consumer, internationally (US->other countries), they will eat Moneygram & Western Union's lunch, and diner, and breakfast, and snack.

<comment><USER10> Or they themselves will be eaten by fraud of all scales coming from a million different places, like most of PayPal's competitors 10 years ago. The odds are not weighed in their favor.

<comment><USER9> Paypal, and other companies, have a pretty good handle on fraud now. They can aggressively hire security engineers from the industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but there is nothing that is so compellingly 'Instant' about 'Instant' that it begs my $3/month ($36/year) for me to use it.

As it stands now, if I want to buy something, I have several options. Use paypal, wepay, dwolla (regular) or some other similar provider, use a credit card, use a debit card, use cash, get someone else to buy it for me. None of which costs me anything to do the transaction.

Sure, there is some noise about charging for debit cards, but that noise turned into massive backlash, so I don't think that'll happen anytime soon. Plus, there are still other options, like another bank with a debt card that doesn't cost me anything.

Sure, a credit card has a fee associated with it and I probably end up paying that fee either in the price of the item I'm buying or directly. But at this point, is the total sum of those fees >$3/month? Maybe, but who really cares anymore? There is a cost to doing business and it can't be entirely free. That said, I'm going to support companies, like WePay, who are at least trying to put a good customer service experience on things and keeping their fees straightforward and relatively low.

I can see how Dwolla is trying to disrupt the whole industry. I like that and I sure believe that it needs to happen. The credit card companies are essentially just another evil empire. ;-) That said, I don't think 'Instant' is the right product for this disruption. It isn't being marketed correctly at all. The documentation is missing from their website and the whole $500 thing seems like a gimmick that is only going to get them into a lot of fraud trouble.

<comment><USER11> I dunno. I get an ATM charge once every month or two because I need cash so I can buy things at places that don't accept credit cards (or at places where I want to buy <$10 worth of stuff). I always end up drawing far more cash from the ATM than I want just to reduce the occurrence of these fees. Even one ATM fee per month will be more than Dwolla Instant (usually $2-$3 for the ATM and another $2 from my bank). If this feature encourages more stores to accept Dwolla, then it may become cost-effective to turn on Dwolla Instant and use that instead of carrying cash.

<comment><USER2> There are banks that offer refunds for atm fees on their accounts. You should consider switching.

A quick google found this [1], I'm sure there are more.

[1] <http://www.bankfox.com/c/no-atm-fees/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks like I'm just going to echo the sentiments of others on this thread, but I feel compelled to issue this warning:

Stay away. This "feature" could bankrupt even a respectable company. Do not trust your money to any company offering credit that cannot or will not provide a balance sheet to back it up.

Yes, I'm a competitor, but there's a very good reason my company did not and does not offer this service. We thought of it long ago, and long ago determined that even with small amounts of credit, the risk to the operator is astronomical.

Stay away, stay away, stay away.

<comment><USER13> I don't quite understand. It sounds like you're saying this is weighted too heavily in favor of the user, so why are you telling the user to stay away? Shouldn't the warning be directed at Dwolla?

<comment><USER14> The warning goes out to anyone who is or will be owed money by Dwolla (ie, mainly the merchants, or payers who pre-fund their Dwolla accounts).

PayPal performs a similar service but backs it with a credit card.

The risk is fraudsters setting up phony bank accounts, piling up a bunch of Dwolla credit, paying themselves and disappearing.

<comment><USER15> In that case they only hurt Dwolla, not any merchants or payers. Their money seems to be legally secure:

        Dwolla warrants funds property of their respective
        account holder. Warranty is only respective of Dwolla
        balance amount under FDIC or NCUA insured funds covered
        by financial institutions holding funds on your behalf.

I don't know what it's like in the USA, but setting up a "phony bank account" depends on a small list of crimes to be commited before...

<comment><USER14> I believe if Dwolla had a rash of stolen funds, the insurance of its partner bank would not cover it (since the insurance covers the bank, not Dwolla).

The US is _much_ different from the rest of the world as far as I know. There are thousands of banks and even more non-banks that have established ACH routing numbers. Fraudsters look for banks or companies with the laxest account opening procedures.

There are some notable payments companies that went out of business because of fraud (NextCard, BankOne EmoneyMail). When that happens, there's a very real possibility of customers losing money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Disclaimer: I've not read details on ALL the different payment platforms that are around, or the regulations when dealing in this market.

With that said, why don't the platforms make it easy for merchants to pass these saving back onto the consumer. You can pay by credit card, but that would cost you 4% more than [insert payments system].

In that way, I'm incentivised as a merchant (more sales/discount with no loss), and as a consumer (real discount).

<comment><USER17> I believe that is against the terms of service for Visa and Mastercard. If you were to offer such a discount they would simply cut off your access to credit cards.

Edit: From the visa terms ([http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2010/02/26/visa- credit-card-ac...](http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2010/02/26/visa-credit-card- acceptance-guidelines/))

Merchants must always treat Visa transactions like any other transaction (with a minor exception). They may not impost a surcharge for using a Visa card, but can offer a cash discount. This discount cannot be offered for use of a "comparable card" such as a different credit card.

<comment><USER18> There are indirect ways of rewarding someone for not using a credit card - like providing a coupon for their next purchase (I saw that at Ikea before). Although if these loopholes gain in popularity the credit card companies could always revise their terms.

<comment><USER19> Similar to how Canadian Tire gives 'Canadian Tire Money' when paying some way other than credit cards.

The bonus is that a fair number of 'mom and pop' shops will accept Canadian Tire money as cash...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My question to merchants would be..

Would you actually risk sales at not offering credit card payments and only offering dwolla? With companies like square they make the entire process incredibly easy.

Would you actually list two different prices on all your items or services based on paying with credit card vs dwolla, or would you just standardize and swallow the 3% or whatever it is ?

<comment><USER21> As someone mentioned in a previous thread on dwolla (re your second point), you don't list two different prices. When the customer is checking out, you give a cash discount if you use dwolla (e.g. 3% off your purchase if you use dwolla to pay!).

<comment><USER11> Are you even allowed to do that? I thought stores don't currently do that because the credit card companies have rules saying that you can't. Or does that not apply if you use Square?

<comment><USER22> Have you ever bought a plane ticket in Europe or Australia? They offer free transactions that are not credit-card based. It's fairly common to have an extra fee in a lot of non-US online and off-line stores.

<comment><USER23> > They offer free transactions that are not credit-card based.

If you're referring to RyanAir (and the other low-cost airlines), then they only offer free transactions on obscure payment types. From what I've seen the 'free' transaction type changes whenever a more obscure and impractical payment system becomes available.

They do that so that they can legally advertise lower prices that they charge in practise.

<comment><USER22> I'm referring to most travel agents outside of the U.S. and perhaps Europe, and many restaurants, shops, boutiques. They pass the credit card fee directly to the customer in many instances, which I'm usually fine with. Larger stores will eat the fee but many smaller businesses can't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know if this is correct?

If someone pays me $1000 with a credit card, I pay Visa $25 (2.5% transaction fee)

If someone pays me $1000 with Dwolla, I Pay Dwolla 25 cents.

That's what I could figure out, but it seems too good to be true.

<comment><USER25> Yes, that's correct. Keep in mind that Dwolla is based on ACH which has lower fees than credit cards; besides that it's just statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So what? Why would I use Dwolla instead of a credit card?

<comment><USER27> I can't think of any reason a consumer would benefit from this over a credit or debit card. Except maybe if they regularly overdraft and prefer a $5 fee to whatever their bank charges.

<comment><USER14> It's targeted more for situations where credit/debit cards are not currently accepted. For example, large transactions for professional services. Think of it more as replacing checks, not cards.

<comment><USER28> That is one of the goals but the other goal is reducing the cost for the merchant. Merchants will prefer you to pay with Dwolla as opposed to a credit card because they don't give up as big of a fee on each transaction, this earning them more revenue.

<comment><USER14> Maybe. But 2-3% is about the right price for a financial txn between strangers, especially when not face-to-face.

<comment><USER11> Why? Why should there be a percentage-based fee at all for financial transactions? This is an idea that credit card companies have pushed onto the world, but there's no reason it needs to be accepted as fact.

<comment><USER14> I didn't really mean all. I did say between strangers and especially when the two are not face-to-face. Two other qualifiers: 1) when "good funds" need to be transferred immediately and 2) for dollar ranges from around $10 to $1,000. This makes up the vast majority of retail commerce for which credit cards are so well suited and widely used.

Best approach is to look for areas where credit cards are not widely used instead of trying to displace them in areas where they work really (really, really) well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand how they actually send you the cash immediately. Does it generate a temporary Debit card?

<comment><USER30> I believe if you are enrolled in Instant they will spot the money for any purchases you make beyond the amount you already have in your account, up to $500 worth. So it just enables you to use Dwolla for purchases without having to wait for a slow ETF transfer (around 3 days) from your bank to fund your Dwolla account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> OOOooohh, when Dwolla goes international I'm so very much saying goodbye to PayPal.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hmm. If I'd been able to use this for margin on mtgox a few months back...

</comment><comment><USER33> International users need not to apply.</comment>


Covid-19 Will Expose the Many Ghosts in the U.S. Economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-19/covid-19-will-expose-the-many-ghosts-in-the-u-s-economy <comment><USER2> Of the restaurants I've heard that aren't reopening in my city, I wasn't that surprised by. I'm wondering how many I haven't heard about just won't reopen.</comment>


Back to 140 chars with quality. One post a day, no links. Keep it simple - <AUTHOR> https://www.qushworth.com/ <comment><USER2> That was a good decision. This will be my only comment on this subject until tomorrow.</comment>


Going Faster with Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kingcons.io/posts/Going-Faster-with-Lisp.html <comment><USER2> SBCL is a very interesting compiler. I can only encourage anyone, who is interested in Lisp or dynamic languages in general to check it out. It always compiles to native code, and as the article has shown, you can see what it compiles to. That gives you direct feedback how good the resulting code is.

By default, SBCL always generates "correct" code. That of course means for a dynamically typed language, that it has to assume any type. Also, for integer operations, it means, still producing a correct result, even if the integers exceed the values which can be represented by machine-sized integers. As a result, the generated code isn't overly impressive in the beginning. But SBCL has very high abilities to reason about the code, including type inferencing. So, when you add a few type declarations, the generated code gets substantially faster, often matching and sometimes even exceeding what GCC produces for C programs.

<comment><USER3> > it means, still producing a correct result, even if the integers exceed the > values which can be represented by machine-sized integers

To clarify for people alien to Common Lisp: In lisp, by default, integer numbers can be as big as they need to. From the Common Lisp Hyperspec, the entry on the _integer_ data type says:

 _An integer is a mathematical integer. There is no limit on the magnitude of an integer._

<comment><USER4> This really is the correct default. If something unexpected happens the better failure case is to be a little slower than expected than giving completely absurd results. Then adding the optional power to constrain the inputs allowing the compiler to use more efficient implementation with those assumptions is awesome.

<comment><USER5> Thee SPARC CPU has/had instructions to add tagged integers which show that this can be nearly as fast as "normal integers"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only person that noticed the hover on the lisp code blocks? Surprised me at first. Can't tell if I like the idea or not.

Rather, I know I like the idea. I can't decide if I like the execution. I'm leaning towards liking it.

<comment><USER7> I kinda want my editor to do that when working with Javascript. Deeply nested callbacks and Promises bend my brain, and it'd be nice to see where one thing ends and another begins. It's easy to bounce back and forth between opening and closing parens/brackets (e.g. % in vim) or have it highlighted, but I often find myself having to sort of scroll back and forth to sort it out in my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: Very interesting article about improving performance in Common Lisp. The author has a 6502 CPU emulator and finds out how to improve his assembly output. Additionally, it shows how the "static" typing facilities of Lisp help for increasing performance.

</comment><comment><USER8> How easy is to embed this? If I wanna make a language and use a lisp as the "backend" this one is good for this?

<comment><USER9> For embedding either as source or as a shared library there are a bunch of Common Lisp implementations:

ECL / Embeddable Common-Lisp -> Can build standalone executables and libraries -> [https://common-lisp.net/project/ecl/main.html](https://common- lisp.net/project/ecl/main.html)

ABCL / Armed Bear Common Lisp -> Embed Common Lisp into JVM applications -> [http://abcl.org](http://abcl.org)

Commercial CL implementations like Allegro CL and LispWorks support the delivery of shared libraries. That way you can compile your CL program to a shared library.

There are even more options (like WCL, mocl, ...).

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate a bit on the (dis-)advantages of ABCL compared to Clojure?

<comment><USER3> ABCL is a full implementation of Common Lisp (an ANSI-standarized language rich on features and with a proven record of success stories) that happens to run in the JVM and has good facilities for calling Java code. However it is a full Common Lisp implementation which means it has all the nice stuff you would expect from such a piece of software.

Clojure, on the other hand, is a _different_ programming language, which for some reasons, and by design, is deeply tied to the underlying Java platform. Clojure "looks like a Lisp", but in reality it is fundamentally different from languages "of the Lisp family" like Scheme, Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp.

There are many, many differences between Clojure and Common Lisp. For a HN thread on this topic, see:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206827)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


(Mineral) Mining company announces intention to pivot to cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/axe-announces-its-intention-evaluate-new-business-opportunities-eventually-redirect-tsx-venture-axq-2243252.htm <comment><AUTHOR> This is a publicly traded company, (albeit a penny stock) and the thinly- traded shares spiked on the news: [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AXQ.V/chart?p=AXQ.V](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AXQ.V/chart?p=AXQ.V)

<comment><USER2> There have been a few incidents of penny stocks "pivoting" to blockchain this year, just to see their prices soar.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/want-to-make-your- companys-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/want-to-make-your-companys- stock-soar-heres-the-quick-easy-thing-you-can-do.html)

I can't find an example, but I'd swear companies did this with "dot com" back in the dot com boom of the late 90s.</comment></comment>


Art Is Hard - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/04/art-is-hard/

<comment><USER2> I couldn't have been more surprised that the title of this was actually the Cursive song that I reflexively started singing in my head when I saw it.

Now on to topical commentary. Why did you choose to advertise your new venture through a required sign-up without any (ostensible) idea what it's about? While my curiousity was piqued, it wasn't piqued enough to willy-nilly send my email off without the expectation that "The Cursive" was something I'd be interested in.

<comment><AUTHOR> This feels right. There are a lot of people asking what comes next and this gives us a manageable way to talk to them.

I'm leaving clues about what we're doing in plain sight, but we're not quite ready to announce it yet. Not being able to share/show/tell and be open yet is necessary but not fun.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough! I'm just some guy that reads HN and am probably not your target, since I just recognize you as the poster that does cool startup data analysis.

Best of luck with your venture and thanks for sticking an awesome song into my head. I'm going to go listen to the Ugly Organ.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're totally my target ;) Enjoy the album, and keep an eye out for more clues

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love Cursive!

... now if you'll stop being so cheeky about what you're up to, I'd be more inclined to give my email :)

</comment><comment><USER4> At least UseHipster (dot) com had a (moribund) byline.

Source:

[http://www.communiquepr.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/...](http://www.communiquepr.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/Hipster.jpg)</comment>


REM vs. EM – The Great Debate - <AUTHOR> http://zellwk.com/blog/rem-vs-em/ <comment><USER2> I use REM for pretty much everything but still fall back to px for padding and margins which hasn't been a problem for me so far although I can see why selective use of EM could actually be useful.

Tangentially related. It bothers me a lot that we have to add classes like header--large onto a component. The classname header--large should be able to automatically switch depending on it's parent containers size (and not the window size like media queries work). My component may be presented it 3 different styles depending on the size constraints of it's container and hard- coding --large into the classname just makes it a hack. It's not large on mobile so why am I overriding the styles of my desktop header--large classname.

Ideal situation, parent container media queries so that variations can be kept solely in css and you could just drop a component into anywhere. I'm guessing there are some circular dependency issues stopping this from working maybe?

<comment><USER3> _" hard-coding --large into the classname just makes it a hack"_

You're gonna infuriate lots of CSS people! That's the basis of modularity: you can just move around a component anywhere on the page, it will keep its styling (thanks to classes like _header--large_ ) and not be disturbed by its surroundings.

Personally, I agree with you, and think it's a bad approach. Elements should be able to be styled according to _context_.

Let's say I have 2 columns: "main" and "sidebar". I have a list of my latest articles in "main". I want to show another list of articles in my "sidebar", but display them smaller, because it's secondary content.

Why should I have to add the ".post--small" class to all my posts? Why can't I use the context of the parent ".sidebar" and use that in my CSS? I could then keep the _exact_ markup for _all_ posts across the website.

 _" Ideal situation, parent container media queries"_

Yes, that's exactly what CSS is missing, but you found the reason why it hasn't been implemented: circular dependency issues.

<comment><USER2> Context sensitive components is exactly what I want. At the moment you have to compute that context on the server and output the correct class names (or on the front-end with React etc, doesn't matter). It would be nice for a component to not be told about it's context but it's CSS can infer it either through parent container breakpoints or something else.

There's too many negotiation between containers because a child component doesn't understand where it is, components are very "dumb" right now. We need smart context sensitive components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I utterly loathe using em units. Rem is better, but px are nice and locked down. Em's are neat in theory, but reasoning about them after the CSS has solidified is so tedious.

Em units begin to feel like a weather app telling you today's forecast as a multiplier of yesterday's temperature.

Today is going to be 1.1!

[uninstall]

</comment><comment><USER5> Since obsolete unterbrowser users must suffer, rem FTW.

What's REALLY missing in modern CSS3 standard is the ability to reassign CSS root to any other element than <html>, according to font properties of which all nested rems would be calculated. So, for now, we have to stick to assigning base font sizes to <html>, not even to <body>.

My microframework (999.css - [http://999.surge.sh](http://999.surge.sh)) uses pixels to assign base font size to <html>, rem for <body>, ems for headings and rems for all other nested typography.

<comment><USER6> While I don't have a solution that lets you reassign the CSS root to other elements, I do use a plugin in my own work that lets me use scoped styles, as well as element queries. It solves a lot of problems.

You should check it out, the learning curve is small, and it is even supported well in unterbrowsers: [http://elementqueries.com](http://elementqueries.com)

<comment><USER5> I would love to check it out, if only your page didn't hang my Firefox. It's really impossible to scroll. Lags are ~10-15s. Hardly even closed the tab. What's going on there? Was it really written with performance in mind? :)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm not the JS dev, but the issue is known and being looked into.

Strangely it didn't affect previous versions of Firefox and whatever is broken at the moment is already fixed in upcoming beta versions of Firefox. I'm not sure what or why, but it might become fixed from mozillas end before a workaround gets diagnosed.

How does it work in IE8 and previous Firefox, but have issues with the current build, but not with upcoming builds? It baffles me

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The main issue I have with _either_ of them, is sometimes having to resort to using crazy values like 15.974rem or 2.0736rem (taken directly from the author's website). Using pixels shouldn't be frowned upon, considering all the preprocessors available, and how CSS variables (the next big thing) are around the corner.

But I would always use EMs for any WYSIWYG generated value, where the design solely relies on HTML tags, not CSS classes. It's then easy to alter the container's font-size while maintaining consistency and balance between all its children.

For borders, in any case, it's better to stick with pixels. Some people started writing things like "border: 0.065rem solid #ccc", which would make the border disappear if you either zoomed out, or set the font-size to something smaller than 16px.

<comment><USER7> After leveling up on typography and what it takes to define a nice typographic grid I found REMs to be a revelation.

A key concept of good typographic grid design is that the body copy line height (or font size as a proxy) is a very important measurement to be reused across your grid.

TLDR; By using your body font size as a basic unit of measure for other visible distances eg padding, margins it's possibly to make your design look better and feel more unified.

My crude rule of thumb for beginners is to use REM for everything by default and then change over to EM anywhere this is not working for you (and this is a crude summary of key advice in this article)

One style guide I read suggested that pixels were ok for anything up to 5px and that REM/EM should always be used otherwise (towards ensuring a nice typographic grid) and I think that's a good practical approach.

If you're essentially thinking in REMs and just translating that to px in certain circumstances to get around crazy numbers, great,if that works for you. But I think that generally REMs provide free design benefits for those that switch to them rather than adding arbitrary non-proportional pixels lengths everywhere within a design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain to me why I would want to use either over px? I just don't get it.

"One of the best practices to typography on the web is to use relative units like rem and em.", it says, but _why_?? I get as a general philosophy that relative might be preferable over absolute, the way you prefer relative paths in your build system. But "relative" in this case means relative to the font size which is either specified or the default, both which makes s using absolute values just as valid and easier to comprehend..?

<comment><USER9> A font size that looks great on desktop is not often optimal on mobile devices.

You can change your base font size with a media query and have the rest of the website adapt accordingly because they're all sized relative to the base font size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my experience most projects that need to worry about things like this are too big for a high level of consistency to work. Either that, or the design is sacrificed to make the code easier. Whenever a designer looks at a page they say "left a bit, down a bit" until they're happy with it, regardless of consistency.

So, yeah, use rems or ems if it makes your life easier. Use a CSS preprocessor with lots of helpful variable names and functions. And just don't worry about it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I got kind of excited at the prospects of a study seeing how EM radiation affects our REM sleep patterns, eapecially with the degree the IoT and 5G will envelop us in the very near future. Unfortunately that debate will be another day...

</comment><comment><USER12> What about good old px? I recently came across this article [0] which argues that after all the "best practices" of rem vs em maybe px is actually the best way to go, in order to accommodate high density displays and zooming.

[0] [https://mindtheshift.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/r-i-p-rem- viva...](https://mindtheshift.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/r-i-p-rem-viva-css- reference-pixel/)

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, both units are pretty useless. PX is the way to go except for some cases, e.g. a button's padding that scales with its text or baseline grids. The following article (not mine) explains why pixel win: [https://mindtheshift.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/r-i-p-rem- viva...](https://mindtheshift.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/r-i-p-rem-viva-css- reference-pixel/)

</comment><comment><USER14> In Semantic UI we include two distinct header types that sized using either REM or EM. Page headings which are generally consistent across a site and usually specified with H1-H5, are sized using REMs so they display consistently. Sizing variations, (tiny, small, large, huge etc) however use EM to allow them to be sized relative to its content container.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you do the following:

      html {
        font-size: 62.5%;
      }

You can convert from pixels to rems (or ems) quite easily:

      p {
        font-size: 1.4rem; // 14px
      }

I use rems for stuff that needs to scale with text, ems for line-height and pixels for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER16> I rarely use rem since I only stopped needing to support IE8 recently. Instead, to deal with the pain of em calculations I use these sass mixins (feel free to use; license CC0 [https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0)) (below is my first attempt at "sassdoc," which I happened to discover while preparing this comment):

        $current-font-size: 16;

        // Remove the units from a value (pretty sure someone else wrote this originally)
        @function strip-units($number) {
            @if unit($number) == '' {
                @return $number;
            }
            @return $number / ($number * 0 + 1);
        }

        /// Sets font-size and line-height using percentage and unitless values respectively, with support for nesting.
        /// @param {Number} $new-font-size - Desired new font size in pixels (units ignored)
        /// @param {Number} $new-line-height - New line height in pixels (units ignored)
        /// @param {Number} $context-font-size - Current font size where you're including this mixin, if it isn't the global $current-font-size
        @mixin font-scale($new-font-size, $new-line-height:null, $context-font-size:$current-font-size) {

            // Set the font size
            $context-font-size: strip-units($context-font-size);
            $new-font-size: strip-units($new-font-size);
            $font-ratio: $new-font-size / $context-font-size;

            font-size:$font-ratio * 100%;

            // Set the line height
            @if $new-line-height != null {
                $new-line-height: strip-units($new-line-height);
                // Honestly don't remember why the "+ 0.0001" here:
                $line-ratio: $new-line-height / $new-font-size + 0.0001;

                line-height:$line-ratio;
            }

            // Include nested content with global $current-font-size set to the new value
            $last-cfs: $current-font-size;
            $current-font-size: $new-font-size !global;

            @content;

            // Reset the global $current-font-size to what it was before
            $current-font-size: $last-cfs !global;
        }

        /// Convert a pixel length to ems at the current (or given) font size
        /// @param {Number} $px-length - Length in pixels (units ignored)
        /// @param {Number} $font-size - Current font size in px, if it isn't the global $current-font-size (units ignored)
        @function ems($px-length, $font-size:$current-font-size) {
            $px-length: strip-units($px-length);
            $font-size: strip-units($font-size);
            @return ($px-length / $font-size)*1em;
        }

(Those are modified slightly and haven't been tested in this exact form.) This lets me do, for example:

        .title {

            // Make the text in .title 112.5% (18 ÷ 16) with a line-height of 1.22 (22 ÷ 18)
            @include font-scale(18, 22) {

                // Give it 15 pixels of padding using em units
                padding:ems(15);

                // Make the text of a .subtitle inside a .title 14px (112.5% × (14 ÷ 18) = 87.5%)
                // (line-height remains 1.22 in this case, working out to 17.11px)
                .subtitle {
                    @include font-scale(14);

                    // Give .subtitle 5 pixels of padding, but instead of nesting
                    // the mixin again, I'll just tell ems() that the current
                    // font size is 14 directly.
                    padding:ems(5, 14);
                }

            }
        }

The nesting isn't attractive and `ems(15)` is a little more typing than `15em` (though not more than `(15/18)×1em`), but I think just using em for everything reduces some cognitive load.

It also lets you do some tricks, like you can set the root element of some component to `font-size:(16/1024)*100vw` and it'll have a "normal" size when the viewport is 1024px wide but scale up smoothly in every dimension when the viewport is larger (and down when smaller). And you can still scale the whole page, including that component, by changing the font-size of html/body.

Thus far I only use rem when I need to override something for an inner element, like if a piece of the aforementioned vw-sized component gets too small when the viewport is less than 640, I would set the font-size for just that piece in a media query using rem, allowing the rest of the component to continue to scale down.

</comment><comment><USER17> This blog has 3 FOUTs - first - the default fonts appear, next - all fonts disappear and after this everything appears as it was at the first time and only after it the correct fonts are loaded.

<comment><USER18> That's Typekit for you, I guess.

This is why

        font-display: < auto | block | swap | fallback | optional >

is going to be useful.

More info: [https://tabatkins.github.io/specs/css-font- display/](https://tabatkins.github.io/specs/css-font-display/)

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

Alternatively, something I've been trying is loading fonts in an embedded stylesheet (<style></style>) in the <body> element, loading critical CSS in the <head>.

This results in content being displayed in a base/system font initially, and then when the web font is loaded in the body, it replaces the base font, but without blocking render and at the same time resulting in only one brief FOUT.

</comment><comment><USER19> REM was easier for me to keep track of and understand. But it didn't work for media/printer queries.</comment>


Huawei's vulnerability to US microchip ban - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48345509 <comment><USER2> Is this clickbait? It feels like clickbait, I looked at the title and assumed there was a _vulnerability_ in Huawei _Microchips_ that I had somehow missed. Instead, it's about _Huawei's_ vulnerability to their _Microchip supply chain_. The usage of the word "vulnerability" in this context couldn't have been an accident, the author and/or editor had to have phrased the title this way on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Huawei's microchip vulnerability explained

This article does not explain a single thing about why those chips are vulnerable.

It just enumerate some of the components within it.

Those clikbait titles for ad-revenue are becoming a real issue...

<comment><USER4> It's not the chips that are vulnerable - it's Huawei's business that's vulnerable to the US blocking them from obtaining those crucial chips.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've modified the original title to hopefully make this clearer

<comment><USER2> If only you could modify the title on BBC's end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the title is a bit confusing, I'd say pure clickbait.

Anyway, interesting topic, let's see how this ends...

</comment><comment><USER6> Huawei will suffer a little bit in the short term and most likely come back stronger since they have the home market and resources to develop a new and better phone with non-USA parts. This trade&tech war is just beginning and is pushed by the USA to do everything without parts/commodities from the USA. So that is exactly what China will do. It will take some time, but China has plenty of resources and \- will buy soy from Russia and stop buying it from the USA \- stop buying tech from the USA and make it themselves. Not well thought through by Trump and his advisors.

<comment><USER4> More like bad reporting by the US media. Russia can't supply even a fraction of the soy required to fill the gap left by China not buying it from the US, they simply don't grow enough. The headlines gave you a different idea because that helped feed a narrative about Trump and Russia. (In reality, China growing their own soy did more to fill that gap, but that wasn't close to enough either.)

China has been trying to push for local microchip manufacturing for years. Where they haven't succeeded it's not for lack of resources put into trying.

<comment><USER6> That is right. Russia can _today_ not supply China with sufficient soy. But Russia has enough soil to change that and since the political will from China and Russia exists, this most likely will happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> clickbait/propaganda title. there is no vulnerability in the security sense. i guess they mean an economic vulnerability, because the chip is made up of parts made by american companies. however they don't even conclude this. they actually make a point that the american companies' revenues will suffer.

</comment><comment><USER8> I so very hope the Chinese government retaliates with a similar ban, it'll be fun watching Apple stock plumet. This trade war is getting out of hand.</comment>


Hex Invaders - <AUTHOR> http://www.hexinvaders.com/

<comment><USER2> I think referring to hex RGB values as "hex codes" confuses those of us who tend to think of hex in non-web contexts: ASCII, opcodes, network packets, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I saw it was just colors and kinda questioned why they'd name it simply "hex invaders", instead of including something about color in the name.</comment></comment>


Hospitals Block 'Surprise Billing' Measure - <AUTHOR> https://californiahealthline.org/news/hospitals-block-surprise-billing-measure/ <comment><USER2> This is why the very concept of insurance discounts are problematic. It might sound counter-intuitive to argue against "discounts" as a solution to bringing costs down, but it actually would.

Medical facilities are forced to artificially inflate bills. Insurance then artificially gets a discount back to a sane price. This helps insurance look like they're "doing something" even when they aren't e.g. High Deductible when you pay 100% up to the deductible ("at least I got the insurance rate!").

Out of network also suffers from this. The networks themselves are discount networks and prices for uncovered patients are artificially high.

If you banned insurance discounts and insurance had to pay the same dollar to dollar cash price (without kickbacks/incentives), it would help the uninsured, it would help re-align patient/insurer motivations (i.e. both demanding low cash prices), it would make price transparency actually meaningful, and it would eliminate insurance networks.

But ideas like this, and removing employer provided healthcare (e.g. everyone on an open health insurance exchange) are politically impossible in the US because no politician can get elected for "taking people's employer insurance and taking their discounts." Even if they're the right thing to do to simplify, reduce costs, align goals, and force insurers to compete again.

<comment><USER3> > If you banned insurance discounts and insurance had to pay the same dollar > to dollar cash price (without kickbacks/incentives)

It never occurred to me before that this is an option. That sounds like a good idea.

I also wonder why health insurance should be allowed as an employee benefit. How does it make any sense to tie my access to healthcare with my employment status?

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell, the main advantages of getting health insurance from an employer are 1) the tax deduction and 2) favorable group insurance plans.

For 1, it's just completely insane that all medical expenses aren't automatically tax-deductible. It's silly that it's advantageous to have my employer pay $200 a month for my insurance plan rather than just pay me an extra $200 and let me use that on whatever plan I want.

For 2, that may be a little trickier politically. Group insurance gets more efficient the larger the group, assuming there's a mechanism to prevent adverse selection. So obviously, we want to increase group size. That was one of the claimed justifications for the individual mandate.

<comment><USER5> For 2 the simple solution is to make the whole country the risk pool.

<comment><USER4> Not the simplest politically, of course, but yeah, that's one of the primary economic arguments for nationalized health care or at least nationalized health insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently uninsured and trying to deal with the healthcare system in the US is so annoying it makes me want to give up and move to Canada.

I went to an urgent care center and had a doctor perform a routine examination for a sinus infection. No special tools or materials were used. Before I went in I signed a form stating that I acknowledged that I was on the hook for whatever extra it cost if the situation required it. I was thinking along the lines of bloodwork, x-rays, etc. The doctor was very helpful in avoiding unnecessary expense as well.

A month after I paid and left I got a bill in the mail stating the that doctor had performed an 'extensive examination' and that cost an extra hundred dollars. They had all the information necessary to bill me this as I left the urgent care. Yet they chose to wait and send me a bill because it's a complete fraud.

I really wish I could find out the answer to how this works, but my guess is that there is some automated process that tacks on extra billing where possible as a way of boosting income. Ordinarily it's a 'victimless' crime in that it is paid for by an insurance company.

But ultimately we're fucked in this country with regards to healthcare. It is a disaster that keeps people sick, yet we need it because it's such a large part of our economy. Little by little this sector has inserted themselves into the literal lifeblood of the nation's finance and health and is holding everyone hostage.

<comment><USER7> Your exam notes are sent to billing, who, using the notes tries to determine which billing codes are correct. Obviously they have every incentive to "up code" and get the most amount of money.

<comment><USER8> This process needs to be more transparent upfront. The physician should know exactly what services they are referring between the course of you entering their room, a formal diagnosis and treatment plan of action being made, and you exiting the room.

Why is it okay to tack on all these mysterious services rendered after the fact that may not have actually transpired and were instead 'upcoded' as the insurance company may cover it. This creates perverse incentives and allows physicians to bill the max rate and optimize for rendering the most lucrative number of services and they can reasonably get away with.

I've seen dentists do this time and time again if you come in with PPO and put the pressure on you for extra services if you have an HMO cause they are barely getting paid, recommending laser treatment for killing bacteria and a plethora of other scare tactics to get you to pay for their fancy equipment and hygienists, etc (confirmed this with a dentist relative).

<comment><USER7> Agreed!

I can understand when some complicated procedures can't be correctly estimated until after, but there is no reason why routine procedures can't be priced out ahead of time.

When my daughter had her tongue tie fixed at a dentist, they gave us the procedure codes ahead of time and I could ask insurance exactly what it would cost. It was beautiful.

It's such a big problem now I'm surprised a hospital doesn't use it as a selling point "we give you a guaranteed estimate and if we're wrong, we eat any additional cost". I know that would weigh pretty highly when I'm selecting a hospital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Balance billing is a total scam. One time I broke my hand while in another city. I went to a clinic and they told me they could perform the surgery on site in about an hour and that they would talk to my insurance company. I got a voicemail from the clinic 2 days before my surgery saying they talked with my insurance company and everything was all set. My surgery went fine and took an hour as expected.

My insurance company calculated that the average cost of the surgery should be about 10k and that's what they were willing to pay. 6 months later I got a bill for $150,000 even for the surgery. First, what are the chances that a bill that large is perfectly even? It's an obvious scam that these places will literally try to charge as much as they think they can get away with. They ask for huge numbers hoping to settle above market rate. At no point during this process was I told anything other than you're covered and with a broken hand, it's not exactly easy to do research.

<comment><USER10> I've seen enough over- or mis-charging "errors" from healthcare billing departments that I'm 100% sure a good portion of them are intentionally committing fraud, knowing that if you call them on it they can just go "oops sorry didn't mean to send that here let me fix it" and not get in any trouble at all. Even if they do it over, and over, and over.

<comment><USER11> I have long felt that errant bills should be inverted, not simply gotten rid of. You legitimately owe $100, they bill you for $300. Now they owe you $200.

There are far too many such mistakes for it to be pure chance. Some of it certainly is carelessness but they don't care if they make such mistakes. (For example, once my wife got back to the exam room before it was realized that the appointment shouldn't have ever existed--she was sent home without anything being done. Many months later they bill for the co-pay for that visit. Obviously some auditing procedure noted the "visit" and the lack of a corresponding bill and "fixed" it.)

<comment><USER12> I volunteered at a hospital not too long ago, and they required all volunteers to have an up to date physical. Well, I hadn't had one in the previous year. So I checked with my primary care doctor, but they couldn't give me an appointment for about 6 months. Ok, no problem, I can get it done at the hospital's employee health clinic. Oops, they're too busy with new employees, they don't have time to do volunteers. Ok, I live right next to one of the urgent care clinics run by the same hospital so I thought I'd go there. Well, they have never heard of such a thing, and they charge $100 for anything, but I figure, if I'm donating my time, might as well not worry about it. So they do the exam, but on my way out, some manager or whatever buttonholes me and says "oh, we didn't realize you were a _volunteer_ , there won't be any charge". I say, well, I already paid...so they reverse the charge on my credit card, after a couple of tries.

So...a week later, I get a bill, because their system knows I was there and didn't pay them. And I think about calling up and telling them it was supposed to be free, and then I ask myself if I really want to debate this with their billing department and I just paid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my case I would've received treatment for a serious neurological issue sooner but for the fact that the hospital did not extend to me an _honest_ price for the treatment. I think this kind of thing effectively amounts to denying some patients treatment and should be treated as such.

We went in the ER and I was admitted. The five day course of treatment on admission we were told would run in the vicinity of $20,000. Something I could afford given the extreme circumstances if insurance were to deny it (longer story there).

But the next day we were told that insurance would deny and the total would now end up around $100,000 for the full treatment. Not something we could afford. And I was not in the state of mind or ability to handle this smartly or know I could get a lawyer or try to start some negotiation with them as people might suggest.

So we had to be discharged without completing the treatment. A month later I had been relocated across country to change insurance to a provider that covered it and was able to start treatment. Now we could see that an insurance company was only paying $16,000 for the full course.

This effectively denied me treatment (amongst other things) and caused pretty significant harm.

(This is not ignoring that I am lucky to be in a position to afford a $16,000 treatment bill and many aren't, but this is to say that when the hospital jacks up the price 7 fold in a situation like this they're effectively saying "go away we won't treat you". They could've just as easily given me the real pricing and then I would've been able to be treated.)

<comment><USER8> Was it an experimental procedure? Why would insurance not cover it once your max out of pocket amount is passed? Sorry if I'm mistaken, health insurance is mind boggling for me, just trying to learn from others if I find myself in the same situation moving forward.

<comment><USER13> So in the USA if you work for a medium-large company they will almost certainly have you on a "self funded health plan". These are plans where the Cigna, Anthem, etc. card you get makes it look like that's your insurer, but in actual fact your _employer_ is your ensurer. The Cigna/Anthem/etc. you are interfacing with is just a contracted administrator that handles the billing, claims, etc. processes, then passes the full costs back to the employer. (The employer will also have various re-insurance set ups to limit their total liability in case of very expensive situations.)

This administrator (Cigna et al.) will have a bunch of policies for certain treatments and drug uses that define when they can be used. These operate like a firewall rule, being parsed, and if you don't match perfectly, you get denied. Sometimes they'll be more flexible, but some are known to be terrible ( _cough_ Cigna _cough_ ).

If you don't match this policy perfectly then your treatment gets classified as "experimental". At that point they point you to something called the "XYZ Company Handbook" which is something your employer maintained. This is a document that almost _never_ exists in reality, but the gist is that "XYZ Company Handbook" will say experimental treatments are not covered.

(There was nothing really experimental about my treatment, it's just high dose IVIG, with lots of patients on it and a half dozen of my doctors all supporting it. Experimental seems to be their euphemism for "expensive, so we don't want to cover it".)

So administrator points to employer, then you go to your employer, they point to the administrator. Then you go to a lawyer or your state insurance commission for help, and they say because it's a self funded health plan it is not technically an insurance product, and is regulated under federal law as an ERISA plan. This means years in court, and the maximum you can ever recoup is only the costs of the treatment. So you have to pay for treatment up front, then fight to get those costs reimbursed. And because there can be no punitive penalties there is no real incentive to act in good faith.

Your lawyer (or state insurance comission) will also point out that because the plan is self funded your employer is actually the ultimate authority and can approve or deny or make exceptions for any claim.

The appeals process can include something called an independent review, where an outside organization can review your case and recommend treatment or not. This is a time consuming process though. Also it doesn't always work out. And they tell you that they are not bound by the results of the IRO anyway.

In our case we were able to change from our employer's self funded plan to a legacy brokered plan, an old school type one where your premiums actually go to the insurance company and the insurance company pays for all treatments. These are regulated by state insurance commissions. This plan was actually provided by a _not for profit_ Blue Cross/Blue Shield and they covered the treatment immediately because my case was pretty darn obvious that I needed it.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the in-depth reply, and I'm glad you sorted it out. Hope you never have to go through this again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is ridiculous, along with that judge blocking the order to bring cost transparency to advertised drugs.

But here we are in California a self described progressive state, but the pols pull this?

Note, I'm not a progressive as I agree and disagree with many things and am politically all over the map but I think these are things that are good for all of us.

<comment><USER15> California talks the progressive game, but in housing for instance, they've failed and failed.

Oregon passed significant housing reform this year - California failed (OR HB 2001 vs CA SB 50).

Lots of articles on this:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/San-Francisco- Ba...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/San-Francisco-Bay-Area-is- not-progressive-on-13319525.php)

[https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/the-disconnect- between...](https://marketurbanismreport.com/blog/the-disconnect-between- liberal-aspirations-and-liberal-housing-policy-is-killing-coastal-u-s-cities)

And one on Oregon's bill: [https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/30/oregon-just- voted-to-le...](https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/30/oregon-just-voted-to- legalize-duplexes-on-almost-every-city-lot/)

<comment><USER9> There are a lot of NIMBYs in California. It's really easy to signal virtue but to actually follow through takes real work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Politicians talk big on health care reform and do nothing. And California's assembly is over 2/3 Democrat; no Republicans to be the fall guy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems like this problem could be solved by forcing an insurance provider to cover every emergency room in a state (note, not Urgent Care).

And in all honesty, it seems that 60% of the problem with modern insurance lies with these totally arbitrary delineations of what is in-network and what is not. The insurance company gains implicit power over where you get treated by making up these "networks". Why should an insurance company be the one certifying hospitals? Shouldn't that be done by, yknow, a government agency and not a profit-seeking insurance firm?

<comment><USER18> > Why should an insurance company be the one certifying hospitals? Shouldn't > that be done by, yknow, a government agency and not a profit-seeking > insurance firm?

I mean, governments do certify hospitals. If you don't have gov't certification, you can't provide medical services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure that on its face that this makes much sense. It reminds me of the kids song "I don't know why she swallowed the fly." Fundamentally the problem is that prices are set by a market, but the market has some inherently unusual characteristics, and has become controlled by a series of government sanctioned cartels.

With private insurance, your insurance contracts with some hospitals. If you go to a hospital that's not contracted, your insurance will pay what it deems "reasonable", and you have to pay the balance of whatever the hospital decides to charge you. With a law like this, the hospital would have to just take whatever the insurance company deemed to be the correct price. This would seem to incentivize insurance companies to have very low "reasonable" prices for out of network visits.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand health care in the US.

I live in Argentina, that's like being the most-dysfunctional and mentally challenged cousing in an already dysfunctional extended family (South & Central America).

We have lots of issues with health care here, _specially_ for those that work on our own (I don't exactly work on my own, but working for a foreign company is more or less the same).

There are lot of stories going around (some of them I know first hand because some relative's kid has a rather strange syndrome, and getting their health care org to cover that was an impossible task) but still, the "You broke your leg here's a 50K bill" kind of story I often get from the us is a total and utter madness.

I kind of enjoy in a bewildered amusement these public displays of lobbying, thought.

</comment><comment><USER21> A certain number of these surprise bills are fraudulent as well.

I had to go to the ER during the middle of the night. Saw the doctor for 10 mins total. A few months later, I got a bill from the physician on duty saying they were out of network; it was for a shade under $1000.

I called the insurance company, and they said, the hospital had a history of sending fraudulent bills, that they had already paid the physician _AND_ previously had sued the hospital for sending these fraudulent bills and obtained a legal settlement enjoining them from doing it.

In another incident, my wife's OBGYN kept sending us small bills, $29, $74, etc. even though we have paid our co-pays. I called them up and asked what the bills were for, and they honestly couldn't tell me-- saying they would call us back. Which they never did. Which I assume meant, "you caught us lying."

<comment><USER22> The only question I have is: How are these doctors and bill coders not sharing a jail cell with Bernie Madoff, and that guy who keeps stealing six-packs from my grocery?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been through the surprise billing stuff multiple times. At this point unless I am unconscious and can not consent, I'm not going to the hospital. I'll bleed out and die on the street if necessary, or spread ebola or whatever. No way am I going there. You go in, they do nothing, then you have $30,000 in bills that arrive in hundreds of stages over the next 24 months.

You're better off borrowing money from the mafia than you are visiting most any emergency room in the US. The mafia has much more straightforward billing transparency, fewer surprises, and is generally more honest.

<comment><USER24> I've been both insured and uninsured. I agree with you. I'd rather die than go to a hospital and leave with enough debt to cover Harvard, Standford, or [name your institution].

Also, know that the primary care givers (nurses mostly but also doctors) don't get paid as much as you think they might. The insurance companies are all for profit so the system is gamed this way.

[Edit] If you need non-emergent surgery and have an idea of what you need you can check out: [https://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/](https://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/)

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with this organization but I applaud them!

<comment><USER23> Thanks for that link! For non-urgent routine care I have a local doctor. I was going to recommend to you a2zimaging, which was a service I used for discount MRIs using unused capacity nationwide, but I see just now they've gone defunct in the last year or so. They used to have MRI scans for $250-$500 depending on state. This was less than the over $10,000 I was quoted without. I seems there's other services claiming to do something similar now but I have no experience with them.

I've also paid cash at old specialists who don't accept Medicare, and traveled to Mexico for care. I've also gotten superb care while overseas. Single payer is probably the answer. If I need serious surgery some day I will likely do it in India. Your site there seems a reasonable alternative I would look into.

But this still leaves open the situations with a serious accident requiring immediate care which would surely bankrupt anyone. Insurance never covers whatever care is nearest to a random accident site, and this scheme is by design, along with the curious situation where each hospital and their staff are carefully partitioned out to different networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The American system is pretty messed up compared to the rest of the world, but I think the elephant in the room is that if you are insured and have money to spend, I think the American system is better just because you have more options and can see specialists quicker.

I broke my ankle in a really bad way rock climbing two years ago. When I first broke it, my health insurance was Kaiser, an HMO, which is a decent example of how a government healthcare system might look like in other parts of the world (you cannot just go see a specialist and everything is controlled by referrals). I had major trauma in my ankle that required surgery, but Kaiser won't even let me see an orthopedic surgeon. Their policy was that since it was foot injury, I would only be able to see a Podiatrist, and I had no choice in that matter since I had no control over which kind of specialist I could or coudn't see. When I talked to my orthopedic surgeon friend about this referral to a Podiatrist, they thought it was crazy.

I went to see that Podiatrist and they basically told me that my ankle was screwed, there was not much they could do for me, and that I will spend the rest of my life in pain. I think in another country like Canada or Britain, that would probably be the end of the story.

I am pretty young, so I didn't want to give up just yet. I went and got a second, third, fourth, etc... opinion from other doctors, just paying in cash outside of my insurance. Eventually, I switched insurances to a PPO plan (just a regular Obamacare plan) and found my way to The Steadman Clinic in Vail, which is where a lot of pro sports players get orthopedic surgery. There, a surgeon recommended a procedure where they use stem cells during the surgery to rebuild dead tissue. I was able to have that procedure.

Two years later, my ankle is still pretty messed up, so I went to that doctor again, and he recommended a third surgery to clean up a bunch of dead tissue. From the time when I decided to see the doctor again to the time I had the surgery was 1.5 weeks!

All this is a great example of why the US system is bad overall, but actually good for the patient if you have money. I have seen like 10 orthopedic surgeons for this injury and have had 3 surgeries, all because I was motivated to try to get better and to try all options. I don't think I would have gotten nearly that much or that good of care under a government plan. The amazing thing about the US system is that if you have money, and you want to try stuff, you just can! There is noone telling you otherwise.

<comment><USER26> That's not how it would go in Canada. Doctors can refer you to whomever they see fit, no approvals and the only oversight is the general process to maintain their medical license.

The ER doc would refer you to an orthopedic surgeon. You might spend some time in a boot waiting for a surgery slot since your injury isn't life threatening, but you would get surgery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's important to point out that in California, if you are treated "out of network" AND your health insurer is an HMO (such as Kaiser), you WILL NOT receive a surprise bill (see [https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme- court/1001051.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme- court/1001051.html)).

Anecdotally, our family have been Kaiser members for nearly 25 years, and we've NEVER been party to a billing dispute. Perhaps Kaiser fights with SF General or other ER providers, but they thankfully keep their members out of it.

Finally, my yearly cost to remain with Kaiser tends to be about 10% less than our company's other PPO options.

</comment><comment><USER28> No they didn't. Lawmakers did.

</comment><comment><USER29> I read recently that the Cleveland Clinic has lost 91% of its net income: [https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cleveland- clin...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cleveland-clinic-s- annual-net-income-drops-91-on-heavy-investment-losses.html)

This just a few years after a 71% loss of operating income: [https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cleveland- clin...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cleveland-clinic-s- operating-income-plummets-71.html)

Maybe healthcare systems are in a pinch?

<comment><USER30> Their net income swing is almost entirely attributable to a ~1 billion change in investment returns. Their operating income only fell 20%, because they had 8% increase in operating expenses without a commensurate increase in revenue.

It's actually all laid out in your link.

<comment><USER31> Curiously, the 1980's liability insurance crisis also arose out of dramatic swings in investment returns, _not_ massive changes to the liability risk side (instances or awards). Which itself precipitated from the Volker Fed's exceedingly ill-considered moves to reign-in inflation (ironically because the financial / FIRE sector dislikes high inflation).

Insurers (and the Cleveland Clinic) achieve income through _both_ premiums charged _and_ investment return on those premiums. Because premiums are a competitive market, more subscribers can be acquired by lowering premiums, possible by pursuing higher investment income. Which works until it doesn't.

Premiums and payouts are locked-in contractually, whilst currency valuation and investments float on the market. Stay on the right side of that and you're Life's Golden Child. Get on the wrong side and nothing can go right.

Curiously, the insurance (that is: risk-management industry) seems blind to the investment-side risk and keeps getting bit by that bug every decade or two.

Wikipedia's (very brief, incomplete) treatment:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My European insurance policy specifies

>Global except north america

i.e. You go to war torn Sudan we've got your back but if you dare going anywhere near that bastion of freedom known as the US...you're on your own.

The fact that medical insurance companies are down with Sudan, North Korea and China...but not the US...that would suggest the need for some introspection frankly.

(Bit puzzled by the Canada inclusion though - any ideas?)

<comment><USER33> Can you link the policy? I highly doubt they cover Sudan.

<comment><USER34> That is not really his point. He means that he can go almost to any other country and be covered, but if he goes to the US, which is one of the richest and most medically advanced countries in the world, he won't.

<comment><USER32> >That is not really his point.

Correct. Thanks for elaborating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'll start this by saying that I'm highly in favor of universal health care. Seems like the best insurance company would be the one with the most patients, which can thus negotiate the best deals. So with that out of the way...

Doesn't this bill completely undermine the insurance business? If a hospital can't charge more than the median value that in network patients are charged, why would you buy insurance? I must have misunderstood or misread something.

I would think this would make it substantially more difficult for insurance providers to make negotiations and cut deals with hospitals. I would imagine they would just pass off the cost to the consumers, as they typically do.

It always seems to me that these half way positions between universal health care and commercial end up being worse than either. From a very high level it sounds like a fantastic thing, preventing patients from getting screwed, but isn't the cost that those with insurance pay more? I would assume that there's far more people paying insurance than the number of people that get these surprise bills. Though I'll admit the whole system feels rigged at this point and is likely intentionally convoluted to make consumers uninformed (by level of difficulty).

<comment><USER36> > If a hospital can't charge more than the median value that in network > patients are charged, why would you buy insurance?

You would buy health insurance for the same reason anyone buys any kind of insurance (above legal minimums).

Suppose a thousand people have a 1% chance of owing $10,000. Their EV is -$100.

If a company offers insurance for $120, the company benefits by making $20 * 1000 and the individuals benefit by removing variance from their life.

<comment><USER37> A massive portion of medical expenses presently paid for by insurance are predictable costs that the insured knew going into the year.

You can find affordable car insurance because your actual payout from your insurer is very likely zero this year.

If your actual payout this year is certainly 10-100k this year depending on what actually goes wrong this year how on earth do you affordably insure that individual. Remember also that sickness stunts family income.

Insurance only makes sense for large hard to predict expenses.

<comment><USER38> It makes sense for insurance to incentivize preventative care (e.g. by paying for it or requiring it), since it reduces future large claims. Otherwise it can be cheaper for individuals to forgo preventative care and wait for insurance to cover the large claims.

<comment><USER12> "It makes sense for insurance to incentivize preventative care (e.g. by paying for it or requiring it), since it reduces future large claims."

This is a popular thing to say, but the trouble with the logic is that the cost of preventative care, albeit small, is multiplied by everybody, while the cost of the large claims is multiplied by a small fraction of everybody.

So whether it is actually profitable to prevent problems is very sensitive to the cost of the prevention, and the likelihood of the consequences without prevention.

I think a lot of people are familiar with the scene in the movie Fight Club where the guy is talking about the cost-benefit equation for initiating an automotive recall. If prevention was automatically profitable, then that scene couldn't exist or make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It died without a vote, and thus it's not even clear from the article who I ought to be calling and yelling at. Chiu? Presumably he pulled it because of pressure from others. Is there some way for me, as a voter, to determine which individual legislators are to blame?

</comment><comment><USER40> Don't worry, the free market (tm) will sort itself. It's all for the best for consumers.</comment>


Weird machines, exploitability, and provable unexploitability [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx7/6245516/6558478/08226852.pdf?tp=&arnumber=8226852&isnumber=6558478 <comment><USER2> such a good and accessible paper to leave you with an intuition on exploitation and weird machines.

<comment><USER3> agreed. further reading: [http://langsec.org/papers/Bratus.pdf](http://langsec.org/papers/Bratus.pdf)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Rails CMS? - <AUTHOR>

Which is recommended and why? For instance, what does Refinery have over Rubricks or Locomotive? <comment><USER2> Apologies for answering in this fashion:

After looking into this earlier, I came to the conclusion that the best for my purposes was Wordpress. Clever use of Nginx configs let's it pretend that it is really on the Rails site, and you can use XMLRPC to transfer data if you need it.

Why? Well, basically, the WP ecosystem is ridiculously superior to that of Rails CMSes, and as much as I love writing Rails I would prefer to just drop in a prebuilt plugin rather than writing code that people don't pay money for.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a client, I recently had to evaluate a number of Rails content management systems. For their specific needs, they chose Radiant because of its large plugin ecosystem and its relative maturity.

I soon discovered that despite being the rails solution that best fit the project, it still lagged far behind wordpress and other similarly battle- hardened software. Most of the other options didn't fare better.

Unless you need interoperability with Ruby libraries, need direct access to ActiveRe* datasources, or you have a well-defined, tightly-limited use case, I'd recommend going with wordpress or something equally mature.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I may, I would like to ask another question. Why a Rails CMS? Shouldn't the question be; whats the best CMS? If I needed a CMS, I wouldn't limit myself to something built on Rails. Sure, you may need to extend that CMS and you want not want to do anything in PHP, but you should be able to do small modifications easy enough. If you need anything big modifications, then perhaps you would be better off building something from scratch.

Also consider the goals of a CMS vs your own goals as a developer. A CMS needs to be flexible for non developers to handle a wide range of tasks. Your own system only needs to handle the basics but be easily extendable (something which Rails should largely bring by itself.) In other words, Rails is already a very basic CMS.

Otherwise, I can't answer the question of "what's the best CMS" in general because different systems are better for different needs. I imagine the Ruby / Rails options are the same. You would likely be better off trying each of those that catch your eye and making a decision from there.</comment>