jolmg

I see toggles for the viewing of separate dental tissues, but I can't seem to get them working. For example, I'd like to view the root canals. There are Show/Hide toggles for the enamel, etc. but they don't seem to do anything. Their translucency toggles also don't seem to do anything. I can focus on a tooth, then hit the cross-section button, but instead of showing the cross section of the focused tooth, it does a cross-section of the entire head. So, there's the root canal selections, but apparently no way to view them.

EDIT: Apparently, the hide/show and translucency toggles only work when viewing the head in a cross section. The root canal is also apparently only the empty space, so showed or hidden, there's nothing to view.

It's a vicious positive-feedback cycle where both parts are both cause and effect. You can also say that the insurance company also does that (fight to pay only a part) because the hospital bills too high for them. They're fighting to be billed fairly as the regular people are billed.

> if the hospital has evaluated that a CAT scan costs them $1250 to do

Remember that the fact that they can use insurance companies to drive up prices means they can also drive up their own costs.

> While there are certainly some issues of concern in the article and the reviewed book, the above seems like exactly what insurance companies should be doing: pricing (or making available) coverage based upon risk.

I mean, it's good for the insurance company to help it make more profit, but it undermines the arrangement of how insurance works. So, I would argue it's not what they should be doing from a societal perspective, and there should be regulation that stops them doing that.

If you take it to the extreme of them being able to tell with 100% certainty who's going to need a payout when, they'll just arrange it so they'll never need to pay out. They'll not do or stop doing contracts with those that will need a payout, or they'll raise the premiums such that they still gain. Insurance would become pointless and customers are better off saving for their own expenses.[1]

I've made this comment before. I'll just quote myself on the basics of how insurance works, to make this point clear:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49820825

> With regards to insurance, that industry depends on ignorance. If an insurance company had perfect information (psychic, precognition level) on who's going to need a payout when and who's never, then the point of the insurance becomes nil. They're not going to enter contracts with individuals that result in a net loss, only with those that result in a net gain. That can look like them just raising prices until it results in a gain. If that's the case, people can just save and use their own money to cover the events that will happen, because insurance would not be of any benefit to anyone at all.

> The way insurance works on a basic level is they know a percentage of people will have a set of events happen to them, but they don't know who. They have a large amount of clientele and charge everyone such that the revenue can cover the expenses of the unlucky percentage of their clientele and make a profit. To the individual, the insurance expense results in significantly less than what they would pay would they be part of the unlucky percentage without the insurance cover.

> The arrangement is founded on the ignorance of who belongs to the unlucky percentage. The economics of insurance don't work without the ignorance. So yeah, at some point, algorithmic pricing of insurance likely ought to be banned if we still want insurance to exist on a meaningful level.

[1] As a parenthesis, it being better to save is in a closed system sort of way. In reality, the fact that a lot of people would still get insurance because "that's responsible" means end providers can raise their prices on the assumption that most of their customers are the insurance companies and insurance companies "are rich", so there would still be a price difference. That's kind of what you see with health insurance where people that are not insured can get lower prices than those that are, such that it may end up even cheaper than the copay. That's for example, kinda what can be seen with styropyro's healthcare story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1162ouPHH3Q

> 5:39 so my insurance denies the CAT scan right I mean that's a really really common move for health insurance they just like to blanket deny procedures

> 6:21: but uh but the stupid part is is then I got billed $3,300 for that scan with insurance and the even dumber part is that I I got a quote from my clinic on what it would cost me without insurance and it was only $1,400 so because I have this insurance it actually cost me more money to get this scan like how is that how is that even possible that is the stupidest thing in the world

I imagine he can't see it because of the stress and anger, but that's probably exactly why the insurance denied it, because they were being billed way too high by the provider. If the provider billed the company what they billed regular people, they likely wouldn't deny them at the start. There's a limit to what anyone can pay, even insurance companies, and they have to put a stop at some point.

Back to the original point, imagine what that looks like with end providers that don't provide separate pricing between the insured and the non-insured, and where most people have insurance. The end provider would just give the higher pricing, the one for presumably rich insurance companies, so you would still save money with the insurance despite the fact that you'd save even more if the insurance companies didn't exist.

Anyway, this is a separate problem from insurance companies investigating too much and undermining how insurance works for their own profit.

> Google has captured what really is a public utility and should be either state-owned or heavily regulated.

I think part of what makes a utility a utility is that the nature of the service is naturally a monopoly. For example, you can only realistically have one set of waterways, so the company providing tap water as a service is a utility. Same with power lines, you can only realistically have one set, so the electricity-supplying company is a utility. With phone/internet service, I imagine that also requires sharing infrastructure.

Google doesn't fit in that paradigm. The nature of their services don't naturally require sharing resources to compete. They a monopoly simply because they amassed a ton a money to do things that other people can't, like drive on all roads on Earth with special cameras, or host however many videos there are on YouTube, serving those videos throughout the world, and even pay livable wages to the creators of the videos.

Right above the thumbnails is a search input. On the top right is also a link that says "Search" that takes you to it.

No, I mean that before, the video would've led to a closet where maybe someone was occasionally paying attention, the footage just recorded in a loop, new overwriting old, and it would only be accessed upon request when an incident happened. The matter would be handled internally; people would use their heads.

Now, surveillance can be automated and centralized. Who knows where that footage is being taken. It's no longer necessarily the school handling its matters internally. They can just offload that and accept the judgment of an algorithm. Maybe you're holding a Doritos bag and that results in police swarming you and almost killing you for fear that it was a gun.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684934

> Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon

Re: government and politics, maybe you fear your government is heading towards authoritarianism, something that would've never crossed your mind in the 00s, and that makes more conscious of surveillance. You've also become more conscious about Facebook and Palantir, etc, and how mass surveillance is a thing that's quite different from regular surveillance (handful of buildings, handled manually and autonomously).

It's not about what party. I don't think another Republican candidate would've had the same effect. Also W. Bush was on for most of the 00s; he was Republican, so what are you even talking about with parties? And though politics is a factor, I wouldn't say "When [Good Party] were in charge, they would have always done the right thing". Both ends of the spectrum can suck, and the polarity itself that's been growing in politics can be part of the problem.

> in what universe is a handful of cameras (less than 10 per building) in a publicly accessible space on a private university unusual or alarming?

> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?

I don't think such a handful of cameras means the same thing today as it meant in e.g. the 00s. Lots of things have changed, the government, the politics, the culture, the technical possibilities.

> You don't need to know how to do the work without the tool. Knowing how to add two numbers together is not the point.

Would you really raise your kids to not know how to add 2 numbers on their own?

I wouldn't even raise my kids to not know how to wash their clothes without a washing machine.

Wouldn't want them to be useless on their own, to be dependent on tools to take care of them.

It's fine to use tools to augment what you're able to do, but it'd be a kind of failure of their elders / of their environment to not teach them how to live on their own, independent, or at least dependent on as few things as possible. Tools aren't necessarily always going to be available in their lives. Having options for their life's necessities is good.

It also helps to know when the job's done well. Just because clothes come out of the washing machine doesn't necessarily mean they're clean.

If we're talking:

> Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

Kind of scary to think of adults that need AI to do their thinking for them, with the adults not knowing how to verify anything and just trust the output.

One can't even say that good circumstances are always better than bad circumstances. Bad circumstances can teach a lot about humility, perseverance, empathy, compassion, etc. Good circumstances can lead to grown, spoiled children, people with a child's concept of how the world works, people with no consideration towards others because they didn't need to be part of a community, etc.

Environment plays a huge role, but it's somewhat unpredictable what lessons are taken. One could also say that it's not unanimously clear what makes a good environment; it's likely not simply about having resources and lacking conflict. Likely an amount of scarcity and conflict are needed.

All this isn't to say that kids are all born the same, but I don't consider such differences to generally matter as much as the effect the environment can have.

>> Why bother learning to retain any information when AI knows everything and can recall it in a split second.

> This is a real question though.

Is it? Why bother to learn how to add 2 numbers when you can just use a calculator.

> Learning means something different than it did in decades previous.

Not really. This is just the acquisition of a new tool. It can possibly be incorporated into education like how calculators were used in the 00s/90s, but you must know how to do the work without the tool.

Equal parents doesn't need to mean equal circumstances. Times and culture change, parents age, family circumstances change over time, their environment outside the home is different, different friends, different experiences, etc. There's a myriad of factors that can lead to very different circumstances for siblings.

If that clipped column of icons were like K-9's, which has a transparent background and left padding, those clipped icons wouldn't be visible.

Redundancy would be fine. It would help in edge-cases like that.

Maybe it depends on your Firefox/system theme.

You can also drag the images. At least Firefox will put a white background on the dragged thumbnail.

University access to the poorer can be handled by public universities that offer their education to citizens/residents (tax-paying constituents of the corresponding political entity or their dependents) at no cost or a symbolic, very low cost.

With regards to insurance, that industry depends on ignorance. If an insurance company had perfect information (psychic, precognition level) on who's going to need a payout when and who's never, then the point of the insurance becomes nil. They're not going to enter contracts with individuals that result in a net loss, only with those that result in a net gain. That can look like them just raising prices until it results in a gain. If that's the case, people can just save and use their own money to cover the events that will happen, because insurance would not be of any benefit to anyone at all.[1]

The way insurance works on a basic level is they know a percentage of people will have a set of events happen to them, but they don't know who. They have a large amount of clientele and charge everyone such that the revenue can cover the expenses of the unlucky percentage of their clientele and make a profit. To the individual, the insurance expense results in significantly less than what they would pay would they be part of the unlucky percentage without the insurance cover.

The arrangement is founded on the ignorance of who belongs to the unlucky percentage. The economics of insurance don't work without the ignorance. So yeah, at some point, algorithmic pricing of insurance likely ought to be banned if we still want insurance to exist on a meaningful level.

> Because passing laws without limits is what leads to unintended consequences.

On this "careful what you change for the consequences it may have" sort of idea, remember that algorithmic pricing is the new thing ("new" on the level it can now be, at least, with all the trading in data going on). It's the thing that may lead to consequential changes. Not having algorithmic pricing is the old, stable way. Passing this type of law is just putting the status quo in writing, in the face of the status quo possibly changing.

[1] In such a scenario, insurance companies are more likely to become some sort of useless middleman you still need, but I'll save the tangent.

Actually, why even limit what it applies to

Learning about their tracking web browsing through WebRTC ports from the apps, you have a point on users not knowingly providing that. Still, if you dissociate from Facebook (not having their apps, not being logged on, etc.) then that tracking would've been ineffective. The rest of my comment stands on their being able to leave it.

>> alternatives for keeping in touch

Phone calls, knocks on doors, emails, regular meetups at places.

It's true they collect more, but I wouldn't say "far, far more". They get the most from what you provide yourself. That's unless you have relationships that share too much about you.

> Healthcare practices that provide necessary care shouldn’t even really be allowed to be for-profit entities if you ask me. The incentives become too perverse as a result.

You don't need to disallow them for necessary care to be provided. You can just have public healthcare programs. That can look like publicly-owned hospitals or regulation that private hospitals must provide certain services under certain conditions if they want to keep operating. Private healthcare then works to provide more than that basic service that fulfills necessary care, to the benefit of the public that can afford more.

It's their blog. They can write in 1337 if they want.

> When Facebook was first launched, there wasn't any widespread understanding of the breadth/intensity of their data collection

Come on, you're trying to tell me that people didn't understand that when they give someone a thing, that someone has the thing they gave them?

> provided genuine value

Yes, the convenience.

> how much personal data was being collected from them

"They collected it; I didn't give it to them."

> but feel like there's no longer a viable alternative that would allow them to maintain the same level of communication with the people they care about.

Yes, "the pesky convenience is forcing me."

> Facebook users are not "choosing convenience" by staying on the only platform that all of their friends and family use exclusively.

"My friends and family are forcing me."

Despite my comments, I'm not totally against the use of Facebook, but I am against the surrender of personal agency and blame-shifting these comments are demonstrating.

The world when Facebook was introduced: "Oh well, I guess I have no choice. There's nothing like Facebook, so I'm forced to upload my family photos to these people. I'm not responsible for doing that. Let me just find somebody to blame, maybe the family that's already using it? Nevermind that there are alternatives for keeping in touch. We don't talk about that. They're just not as convenient, so they're obsolete."

People can choose Facebook or to get in contact with people individually via phone, email or visits, but they prefer Facebook because it's more convenient to put a message there and count as maintenance of a group of relationships. People can choose between accepting the cameras or participating in the democracy they belong in and protest and pressure their representatives, but it's more convenient to accept.

It's true there are people without choice, but most people aren't without choice, and they choose convenience.

What's typical is saying "I have nothing to hide" or valuing a bit of convenience over privacy and other principles.

No, they also capitalize abbreviations like COVID and PIP.

I remember having a phase as a teen where I didn't capitalize the first letter of sentences because it just seemed redundant. Periods are there; why need another signal that another sentence has started? It was like a redundancy = bad phase.

It's pretty great as long as it doesn't evolve into them no longer printing the cards and requiring use of their app, consequently on one of their approved OSes.

.jobs was introduced in 2005, so not by much. Honestly, I'm surprised it's that old. Thought it was part of the new gTLDs.

Nope

It should be useful when trying to type in a vehicle that's shaking a little. Your can tap another key by mistake on a virtual keyboard amidst the shaking, but not really on a physical one where you're grabbing and navigating the keys with your thumbs prior to pressing.

Virtual keyboard haptic feedback seems more like gimmick. If it actually serves a functional purpose, I'd be surprised and interested. Maybe if you had feedback activate as you glide through the keys, but Google's keyboard at least doesn't.