kcy

Interesting article (http://healthpolicyandreform.nejm.org/?p=12706) in the New England Journal of Medicine about a county in Colorado that was featured in a New Yorker article (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_...). This NEJM article describes some of the reasons poeple think this community has been able to keep costs low but maintain high quality care.

Anyone know if there's anything like techshop.ws available in Boston?

would definitely be interested and would be interested to help out.

hmm... the last line kind of surprised me, even though I don't think I should be surprised. Do you think the Dropbox folks ever look at your filenames and/or open your files? I guess I similarly wonder if the Google Gmail folks ever read my emails. I'm not really worried about them doing it in some systemic evil fashion so much as some random developer or sysop just looking through things.

Anyway, thanks for posting this. I'm a huge Dropbox fan and it was cool seeing a bit of their history.

Read HN all day looking at all the interesting ideas people are posting! C'mon you know this is what you're going to do anyway. Just kidding. But, hopefully we don't see you back here till Monday w/ some more wisdom and knowledge to drop on us all.

Just to add to the mix. How about TED Lectures, youtube around for old Feynman or Steve Jobs videos, check out OpenCourseWare or any of those online learning sites and make a dent in an interesting course. Catch up w/ friends on the phone.

I also second the jQuery, Python, Django, Google App Engine, and Processing crews.

Hope your ankle gets better soon!

I was looking for two things when I got my netbook: 1) great keyboard, 2) great battery life. By virtue of it being a netbook I figured it would already be relatively small, light, and cheap. I think the Samsung netbooks have the right formula.

My NC120 has an awesome keyboard, battery life that seems to stretch forever (8 hrs, and I have a second battery!), and it was only $400 at Amazon (+ $90 or so for the extra battery). It's not ridiculously light like some of the other netbooks out there, but light enough that I put it in my bag and forget it's there. Light enough that I can carry it around town like a spiral notebook and not feel fatigued.

Really the only issue I have with it is that the screen is glossy and I personally prefer matte. Also the windows key is on the right side for some reason. Whatever, it's still great - the screen doesn't bother me that much (still would prefer matte) and the windows key thing is totally invisible to me now. Also I've found that when I'm out at a coffee shop or something people stop me left and right to ask about it. It's interesting who asks - retired folks and middle age folks.

My wife and I took it on vacation and watched movies and TV the entire flight off of iTunes. It was the slightest bit jerky at times but certainly not enough to be bothersome. As a random addition, the NC120 contains a subwoofer. Ha! Not that you can really tell.

I know I'm gushing. I'm going to stop. I don't work for Samsung, but the NC120 is truly great (I'm sure it's sister models are good too). It hits the magic keyboard/battery life/weight/cost sweet spot that makes it just feel awesome!

And yes, I can totally code, write long reports, and respond to emails, browse HN, etc on it to my heart's content. I got a little portable mouse which I rarely use, but sometimes pull out when I'm using it for a long time.

Ok, I'm stopping now. Hope it's helpful to someone out there!

I wonder if the results would have been different if the title had led with the word Rails instead of Django. I certainly clicked the link because my lizard brain saw Django and before I knew it here I was.

That's pretty sweet! I thought this video was great: http://felixsmachines.com/video.html

Anyone have any favorite links to a good rapid jquery intro for someone familiar with programming?

He references an interesting concept called Conway's Law, a law stating that: organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

Here's a link to the article Melvin Conway wrote describing this insight: http://www.melconway.com/research/committees.html

Also the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conways_Law

This is a self-absorbed inflammatory post from someone who is clearly going through a difficult experience. I don't think he's a troll (though the account was created 2 hours ago), but I also doubt there's anything you can say to him in this thread to change his feelings.

Would it be impossible for webapps to just have different interface versions always available? Like if I really liked something about the very first release, I should be able to roll back to that version and use that. We should all be able to use the interface that we like the most and upgrade as we see fit.

I'm an HBS'er who has also started 3 companies over the past few years (including one while at HBS). I'd say HBS definitely emphasizes supporting entrepreneurship, but it's not the way that you'd expect. HBS is a great place to start a company not so much because you learn about entrepreneurship in the classes as much as the place is so well setup as a platform to support people starting companies.

Yes, HBS is all about the case method for its classes. It's actually a great way to learn. It is very time consuming, all-encompassing, and incredibly powerful if you commit yourself to it rather than blow it off the way many post-consulting, post-finance students may. The case studies will give you some tools that are really helpful in organizing a business, but they will not show you how to do it. The only way to learn how to start a company (in my opinion) is to actually do it yourself. The reason HBS is a great place to start a company is that you have access to all of Harvard, MIT, Babson, Boston University, several world-class hospitals, and many venture capitalists in the Boston area. HBS offers a protected time where you can get successful entrepreneurs (your professors, case protagonists who come in, classmates, etc) to help you come up with ideas, get in contact with people, and create something of enduring value. You are surrounded by classmates from any industry you could imagine who are connected at the very top who are excited to just have lunch and talk about whatever you want to talk about.

While it's true that many people out of HBS go to work at a company, the statistics show that more than 50% of HBS graduates ultimately do start their own companies, often only a couple years after leaving HBS. If you look at the sorts of companies they start there are many really great companies, not just random me-too sorts of small tech companies based on relatively thin IP.

I think it's really easy to dismiss a place like HBS as a place that just churns out consultants and crappy I-bankers. In all honesty I looked at HBS, and MBA programs in general, like that a few years ago too. I was a techy who thought most business people only had a limited amount to add to any true entrepreneurial endeavor. I still think that's the case for many business types and surely HBS still pumps out its fair share of consultants and crappy-douchebag I-bankers. Nevertheless, there are also some world-class entrepreneurs there. People who will and have changed the world in far more significant ways than most technical folks who think the way I used to will ever really appreciate.

Also, just for the record, I know there are a group of HBS'ers who do read HN regularly and have attended Startup School. I for one have not signed up for hndir.com yet and I'm guessing most of them haven't either. I have my yahoo mail account that I'll use to sign up for random sites, but I'm a bit more selective about how I use my .edu account and it's not clear from the website that they won't use this for spam. Overall I like the idea though. Just my 2 cents.

Can you do all the image/signal processing stuff with the home edition? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=382986

I have the Apple TV and have cancelled cable as well. Greatest thing about Apple TV is that my wife and her sister - neither of whom have any patience for futzing around with AV or computer equipment - can easily figure everything out and happily watch TV/movies whenever they want. Also, LOVE watching podcasts on a normal TV and being able to control music playback in the living room via my phone. Video podcasts have replaced the time I used to spend randomly flipping through channels.

I think the only thing that's really missing from my current experience is an easy way to stream live video to my Apple TV (without breaking the simple interface). It was a bit of an issue during the election. I would have paid to have had access to a CNN or some other news channel other than one of the broadcast networks, though PBS served us reasonably well.

So let's say you have a CS background and want to pick up python today - is it worth it to read up on the 2.0 stuff or just go right for 3.0 seeing as 3.0 is "backwards incompatible"? Is there a mass exodus to 3.0 happening or are there going to be a lot of people (e.g. researchers in other disciplines whose life is only peripherally programming) who are going to stick with the 2.0 that they already know and love?

And is this (http://docs.python.org/3.0/) the best place to look for 3.0 learning material or is it better to do the Dive Into Python (for v2.0) thing then figure out the 3.0 differences?

Great talk by Bezos on how the internet is more like electricity than the gold rush: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_we...

This is similar to his Startup School talk (http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/jeff-bezos), but perhaps offers a bit more perspective.

Ha! That's great! So glad to hear you found the right car for the job. Go Hacker News!

I'm a med student and a programmer. I think there are a lot of similarities between these two disciplines.

The body is an incredibly complex system that you or a pathological process can perturb in a variety of ways, just like any other system. The results of those perturbations may be evident immediately or may take a long time to present themselves. The results are output in the form of physical signs and symptoms. The way this particular system works is that there are more potential pathologies than there are physical signs and symptoms, so sometimes you end up with collisions in the pathology to sign/symptom mapping. In these cases you can use instruments like labs, radiological tests, and sometimes invasive methods like surgery to further investigate. These tests are imperfect and are themselves perturbations to the system.

If you can come to a final diagnosis of the underlying pathology using the tools at your disposal (history, physical exam, labs, tests, and procedures) you can then engage in a therapy. The more precise your diagnosis, the more precise your therapy can be. Again, therapies are also perturbations to the system. Ideally these perturbations move the system back into its normal functioning state though they may also cause undesired results that must then be diagnosed and treated.

This entire process takes place within the context of a social interaction that can itself help or hinder. Both doctors and patients have their own social idiosyncrasies that may or may not match up well with each other.

I believe that most physicians operate by generating a gigantic hash table. Essentially they know several patterns of physical signs/symptoms that act as the key. The value is whatever knowledge they have of that disease process. As medical knowledge progresses some physicians update their hash table keys/values with new information, most don't. Almost all physicians update their hash table (i.e. learn) using information gathered in the process of seeing their own patients and recognizing the difference between the predicted outcome and the actual outcome. This is often a subjective process. I think it is because of this approach that most physicians find it hard to believe that medical diagnosis and treatment can be highly systematized and is at least partially such an obvious idea even needs a study to support its use.

Do you think there are other industries that would be a good example for the medical industry to follow? It seems like coming up with standards for such a complex area has been a stumbling block for healthcare. Is healthcare more complicated than other areas that have seen massive success with IT or is that just an excuse?

Does anyone have any good resources that describe frameworks for developing standards or examples of other industries that have done a good job with standards?

This Charlie Rose of George Lucas has some really interesting parts about how art is technology. That is, technology as a way to realize a vision - an artistic vision in George Lucas' case. I think the particularly interesting stuff is around 23:30 and 27:00. Reminded me of Hackers and Painters.

I think you have about 1 year in industry before your academic cred is used up. Generally speaking, a research position in a company like Google, IBM, HP, etc. is definitely more in-line with what the admission committee will understand and respect than a code-monkey job at a web 2.0 startup or in finance. I think these latter sorts of jobs hurt your chances of getting into a highly respected academic program, though they may make you a better entrepreneur. I think status in the software community (e.g. at HN or in the open source world) matters little unless someone on your admission committee knows what that status means. My experience has been that many university professors at Stanford and MIT have no clue about this sort of stuff (though of course some are very well-informed).

You should probably ask your current professors for letters of recommendation now and have them sent to your registrar so they can be forwarded on later when you decide to apply. Unless you have a natural way to continue your connection with your professors it will likely be very difficult to go back to them even a year later and ask for the letter and have them remember you (unless you were a super-star of course). Just get your letters done now. You can always have them update the letter in x years if you feel there's something relevant they can add. More likely than not you'll just be thankful that you already have the letters since you never really maintained contact. On the other hand, remember that the longer you wait, the more unusual it's going to be for the admission committee to see a letter from so many years back.

If you're really serious about wanting to get into one of those programs you could actually move to Stanford/MIT and try to get a research position working with some of the people in those departments. Or perhaps going to them and asking if there's any companies they would recommend working at prior to a graduate program.

Glad you'll be checking out the Mazdas! I would just mention to make sure to check out the Mazdaspeed line. Despite the similar sounding names, the Mazdaspeed 3 is far superior to the Mazda 3.

I have the Mazdaspeed 3. It's basically a souped up version of the Mazda 3. It's less expensive than many of the other cars mentioned (which I also looked at) but is far and away the most fun car I've ever driven. Can do a sub 6 sec 0-60, is a hatchback so doesn't catch the eye of the police (side benefit is that it will fit your friends' bags), and gas milage is good.

Never thought I'd drive a hatch, but this thing is a beast without looking super pretentious.

Two suggestions - totally personal, so curious what other's think: 1) get rid of the front page dominating "welcome", I think it's unnecessary and annoying - people will click on the link and read more if they want to.

2) make the interface exactly like hacker news. For instance I think the bold titles is a bit distracting, esp after navigating over from hn.

3) one of my favorite features of hn is that I can often just type "n" into my browser address bar and the browser autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com. This is particularly useful on my mobile. Would be cool if the name of non-hn had some similar sort of name that leveraged autocomplete.

I agree, this is a really difficult balance. In the real world I think Tyler would have said "Ok, I'll try and be nicer to those other folks" during the one-on-one meeting then returned to his original behavior w/in a matter of days or weeks.

So, do you compromise the technical strength of the team by firing Tyler or do you compromise team unity by keeping him?

My thought is that this is not a simple one way or the other answer. The post took the middle ground of talking with Tyler, which I don't think would really work out the way he wrote most of the time. Is there something else he could have said?

If you've had several conversations and this behavior is just the way it's going to be then what are the boundary conditions around when it's best to keep Tyler around vs firing him?

finishing med school

Actually from what I've seen Google uses Google Docs extensively internally including for presentations within groups. Sharing docs is so much easier that way. I think most people use ppt for outside / important presentations though.

This seems awesome. Is this for real?

Hi LPTS, I think we should talk more. Are you going to be at startup school?