HN user
The outrageous price increases directly led to people dying because they couldn't afford life-saving medication.
Who died? I'm curious because if that happened, I figure we would have heard about it. Do you have a link to a story I can read?
although they obviously kept much of their supporting evidence classified.
Was anything not classified? I have trust issues stemming from an unnecessary war based on false premises when I was a child.
Most of my hesitation stems from a lack of information about it. "Russians hacked Podesta's emails and released them to Wikileaks."
"Russians hacked voting machines."
Those are very targeted statements, and I'd feel better about the whole thing if more questions were answered.
Have the hackers successfully been linked to the Russian Government? How?
How long has this been going on? Since before this election cycle? If so, why is it only now an issue worthy of public attention?
Have other Government entities, China, North Korea, etc, done the same?
Have we seen similar attacks from inside the US?
but the last 6 months and this moment in particular is a level of shame, embarrassment, and disgust that I have never felt in my 45 years as an American citizen.
I personally felt more disgust when we bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital. But I guess Trump's kind of outlandish too.
"They can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer." -Edward Snowden
Sorry, but I don't buy that they aren't in the business of data collection. I'll buy that they don't have the time to analyze everything if there's not a compelling need, but the data does exist and is readily available to be abused at any time.
I put some of this blame on the hospitals themselves as well. The fact is that I have no idea what I'm going to pay when I get to a hospital or doctor's office. They won't tell you anything up front. By the time you know what they cost, you're on the hook for some ridiculous amount. They won't give estimates, you can't shop around.
And medical coding to figure out what you're paying for and what a normal price should be is ridiculously hard to understand. Some of this is going to be their response to a litigious society, but you can't use that excuse for all of it.
Also, if someone doesn't have insurance, the fact that the hospital puts you on the hook for the full bill is ridiculous. Insurance isn't paying 100%, they are discounted crazy amounts, even only paying 20% in some cases. But you don't get this discount from the hospital. If you show up without insurance, you will be charged the full amount, less what you can negotiate on the spot. And most people don't know they can even try to negotiate it.
I agree that the insurance companies are a huge problem, but I don't think the hospitals and doctors' offices themselves should be absolved from their share of the blame.
Microsoft published a research paper on "Why Nigerian scammers say they're from Nigeria". Was that research paper a stereotype that painted Nigeria in a false and negative manner?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
Pop history in particular artistic works are reflective of society. Look at early Bond movies for example.
The Human Centipede
Gawker fucked up a lot. But our media landscape is worse off without it.
I disagree that we're clearly worse off. For a good explanation on why, this is a pretty good read:
https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato...
The thesis, for those less interested in buying the book, is that when we embraced blogs like Gawker and Buzzfeed as a source of news content, the quality of our news decreased drastically.
You went from sort of the New York Times subscription-based model, where people are subscribed already and your journalists can focus on the quality of your content, back to the days of "EXTRA! Read all about it," where everyone is just trying to be heard over the thousands of other available blogs.
So our headlines became clickbait, content became lies, and because it's so pervasive, there is little to no accountability.
The hogan case is important because it adds accountability.
The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.
That was the original statement. To me, the fact that 'range' is included, means there's more than just two choices implied. I do believe it misrepresents the argument to suggest that there's only two 'extremes' of "taxes and regulation" or else "we go extinct."
Witness the poster you're replying to, suggesting we accept human extinction rather than taxes and regulation.
Straw man or False dilemma?
You don't need to be a heroic icon to be more valuable than a 100x developer.
The 100x teacher who molds the mind of the kid/teenager/adult who eventually cures cancer is worth more than just about any single 100x developer out there right now, and you'll never know that person's name.
(Yeah, I'm aware there will be multiple different cures for different cancers, the point remains)
The link I posted above is a common SQL land usage. Dimensional modeling in a star schema is very widely used in BI projects.
There's actually two competing philosophies on data warehousing (Inmon and Kimball), but I've only ever used Kimball's method, which favors denormalization.
http://www.computerweekly.com/tip/Inmon-vs-Kimball-Which-app...
Yes, especially in business intelligence / data warehousing. Here is an excellent resource if you're interested in this sort of thing: https://www.amazon.com/Data-Warehouse-Toolkit-Complete-Dimen...
This is really to a point where it can only hurt Google. Just look at the word choice in the article:
The crashes are calling the safety of such automatic driving features into question, just as they're being incorporated into more and more cars on the road.
Tesla's failure in this court harms the entire concept, not just their own brand. The average person isn't going to distinguish between Tesla's inappropriately named 'autopilot', which is not 100% automatic, and Google's, which is.
Are you suggesting they're not? Where did he plagiarize them from if so? He can't exactly prove they're original, but you could prove they have at least been said before, if not plagiarized.
Except that I didn't say anything at all about the Government's right to seize the money.
I commented on the stupidity of transporting the money in such a fashion, and the skepticism of what the article was telling me about how he got the money. And, no, even though you would like to misrepresent that statement, it does not imply he did something nefarious to get it.
So if I understand what you're saying here: "You don't believe that the Government had a right to seize this guy's money, but since you question the story you're given in any way, your attitude leads to dictatorship and oppression."
I agree.
First off, upon googling this case beyond the two paragraphs, the money didn't just come from waiting tables and working retail. I've done both, and saving that much would have been nearly impossible for me. So while you question that assumption, it turns out I was right. At no point did I suggest the source of the money was nefarious.
Second, I'm much more concerned with the foolishness of putting one's life savings ($11,000) in a bag, and handing that bag off to someone, who will hand it off to someone else, who will hopefully put it in the right plane, and then someone else will hopefully pick it up, and that person will put it on the right conveyor belt, and nobody else will just take the bag anyway off the conveyor belt and walk off with it.
I had to look it up because it's so bizarre. The explanation is even more bizarre.
Charles was carrying his cash because his bank has few physical branches and he and his mother were in the process of moving and he didn’t want to lose his life savings in the move while he was in Cincinnati.
So open up a Chase, or Bank of America, or <insert bank here> account instead of risking someone just stealing your cash in a checked bag that you won't be watching for a few hours, much less airport security?. I've lost bags at the airlines before and had them sent to the wrong cities and such.
Someone checked a bag with $11,000 cash in it that he saved up by waiting tables over 5 years? So many questions...
My issue with it is the arbitrary way you've decided what 'level of cognition' is worthy of your protection.
Also, is there a definition of 'level of cognition' that you can give which encompasses fish, rats, birds, etc. (everything on the link you provided), and does not include ants?
I've never had a medical bill sent to collections, but I did have a (thankfully small) student loan sent while I was diligently paying the other loans because the mail was going to the wrong address. However, I can say from that experience that I could not pay my school at that point. The collector owned the bill. They had paid the school for it, so the school had already gotten its money. But there's no HIPPA violation in sending a medical bill to collections, and making false accusations like that to get out of paying a legitimate bill (or getting a legitimately delinquent account removed from your credit report) is slimy at best.
One of the accepted methods here goes as follows: Pay the Doctor's Office. Send a letter saying you refuse them to share any information about the service provided. Challenge the debt collector through the credit reporting agency. Collector will then try to get the doctor's office to confirm the debt, which they no longer have a compelling reason to. CA drops it off your report because collector can no longer confirm it.
Works almost all the time. There is no false HIPAA accusation here.
B. Are you referring to items at collections? Then yes and no. Collection agencies will usually offer Pay-For-Delete if you ask for it in writing, in which case you pay the item and it's removed from your report altogether. You still end up having to pay the bill. The alternative (if it's a valid delinquency) is to let it sit for 7 years until it falls off.
Collection agencies do not like to pay-for-delete. They'll say they're legally bound to report exactly as it happened (also a lie). They will fight you on it if your debt isn't significantly large enough that they're making enough profit for it to be worth it. You can get them to do it, it will just take time and negotiating.
A. This is only possible by virtue of having little to no actual credit history. If you're in your 30's with a mortgage, paid off student loans and paid off vehicles, you're not going to make massive positive changes to your report in a year without major negative items falling off.
I had 12 delinquencies removed. They were of varying difficulty, all different collectors. Some were easy, some very, very hard. One in particular I had to go so far as to pull phone records from years ago. Any negative item falling off your report is huge. Even one small $100 delinquency hurts you a ton, regardless of your history.
The only thing I didn't deal with was credit card debt. I hear its a lot harder to get late payments removed, but I've never tackled it.
Pull your credit regularly.
Credit score is a huge scam too. Coming out of college I was in the bottom 5th percentile in the nation from random medical debts and such, and within a year I was in the 95th percentile. I spent a lot of time researching and negotiating on the phone to make that happen, but I paid nearly nothing.
There are so many tricks that can be used to improve the score that are completely counter intuitive. For instance, you would think it would be a good thing for your credit to pay a delinquent bill? Almost never. It's acknowledgement that you owed the debt to begin with, so it hurts you.
In the case of your doctor's office, the best thing to do is NOT pay the debt collector, and then go a different route through the doctor's office instead. Generally you can scare them with a potential HIPAA violation into getting the item removed from your report.
Edit: I should clarify, pulling your credit will only help for things that are outstanding and have already been reported as delinquent. The important thing to know is that if you catch it on there, you can negotiate anything. Even if you have to call back many times until you get the 'right' person, you can social hack the process.
There's a chess term for that too. :)
They updated the article it looks like. It originally said six in several places.
Edit: In fact, they left in one of the original references: "In six days they emerged..."
That's a fallacy of relative privation though. "B happens more frequently, is more dangerous, or causes more harm than A. Therefore A can be ignored."
AlexandrB was dismissing one argument because he found a bigger issue.
I can't comment except for my own experience. We visit relatives in Cuba occasionally. When we go, we always had to come up with some excuse to bring medical supplies and leave them there. On one occasion, my mom pretended to be crippled for the trip down so that we could justify bringing a wheelchair. Then she just left it. Same thing would apply across the board for anything you could think of. We'd get a doctor's note, bring along medicines 'for ourselves' then leave them with family there.
The situation is pretty bad there. It's almost like the economy doesn't exist. You can be an architect, for example, but there's really no new buildings going up. You get a coupon book every year good for things like a pair of shoes, but no shoes are being made. People rely heavily on goods and money from Miami. Money can at least buy them non-American imported goods. A friend's family even brought a window down with them once somehow.
Anyway, I don't know everything about it, just anecdotally what we've seen when we made our trips down, plus the stories from cousins who have made it over recently.
Reliability is a huge, huge concern with guns. That's why a weapon like an AK-47 is so popular. It shoots if it's muddy, sandy, you name it.
A failed fingerprint recognition (even due to the conditions listed above) when you intend to use a gun means you're probably dead.
Edit: I listed wet as a condition an AK would fire under, but I don't believe that's accurate. The original point is still true though, the AK is touted for it's reliability.
Unless I'm misreading your last sentence, I think you vastly overestimate how much it annoys me.
The only issue I described was extraneous noise on the website (most of which has nothing to do with weather). It's just less usable/aesthetically pleasing than the alternatives.
I'm not losing sleep over it or anything. I just use the alternative site instead.
Wunderground and weather.com were owned by the same company? For some reason I never would have guessed that just based on my experience on those sites.
Wunderground generally feels clean and on-topic.
Weather.com is often filled with "Doomsday scenario with newest hurricane season" and "Check out this massive shark jumping" news stories.