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pg_bot

5,082 karma · joined June 24, 2011

Technical founder at scalpel.com. We make practice management software for primary care clinics and run a clinic in Greenville South Carolina.

tom [at] scalpel.com

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pg_bot··on Adaptive PDFs
See also:

https://pdfa.org/resource/pdf-2-0-application-note-002-assoc...

pg_bot··on Adaptive PDFs
Yes this is already possible. You can look up the ZUGFeRD standard for an example of how this is done for German invoices.
pg_bot··on What killed the Florida orange?
A similar thing happened in France in the 1850s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight

pg_bot··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
I own {{mylastname}}.com and have been making a small social network for everyone who shares my surname. (it's rare) I'm using Facebook's NLLB to translate posts to different languages since we are mainly split between the Americas and Europe.
pg_bot··on Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock
It's a good time to be Messer.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-just-sold-heli...

pg_bot··on A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
I suspect this is true for almost every somewhat relevant subreddit. Everything has been captured, someone has taken control of the politburo and is defining the message. I've been using the site since 2008 and within the last couple of years it feels like you cannot post anything unless you know someone.
pg_bot··on Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says
Just make it an auction that runs every month.
pg_bot··on Hiding messages in a deck playing cards
You could also add face up or down.
pg_bot··on FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
We are running out of floppy disks. No one makes them anymore, and there is a finite supply of existing inventory.
pg_bot··on IMG_0416
"Turn roll Nate roll some little" might be burned into my brain now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOSWZduStYs

pg_bot··on Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public
It seems like it worked out quite well for Cloudflare. You typically only increase bounties if you aren't seeing the results you want.
pg_bot··on East and Gulf Coast ports strike
You need to take the long view. The United States is the only global superpower because of our economic might. If other countries catch up to us, they will start to test the waters on whether going to war is advantageous for them.

The ports play a crucial role in wealth generation for the USA. If other countries are able to ship goods cheaper and faster than us, more industry will be transferred overseas. This creates a vicious cycle where industries that exist due to agglomeration slowly decay. Being able to move a container 1000ft is the limiting reagent for entire economies. Buy the unions off and automate it. Everyone only cares about a relatively small amount of money compared to how much is moving through the system.

pg_bot··on East and Gulf Coast ports strike
The port would not be run by the federal government. Pass an infrastructure bill that funds port automation and gives a healthy wage for ~30 years to any longshoreman who is either automated or wishes to leave. Give them 150k per year with no contingencies.
pg_bot··on East and Gulf Coast ports strike
The federal government should buy out the union
pg_bot··on East and Gulf Coast ports strike
From a national security and economic perspective we need to automate the ports.
pg_bot··on Using Fibonacci numbers to convert from miles to kilometers and vice versa
It's approximately one kilometer.
pg_bot··on Using Fibonacci numbers to convert from miles to kilometers and vice versa
A mile is 5,280 feet and a kilometer is approximately 3,280 feet.

If you need to do rough conversions just think of a kilometer as slightly more than 3/5ths of a mile.

pg_bot··on Big Pharma claims lower prices means giving up miracle medications. Ignore them
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34904207/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825214/atorvastatin-out-...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825187/lininopril-out-of...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825259/albuterol-out-of-...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825193/levothyroxine-out...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825244/amlodipine-besyla...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/822626/gabapentin-out-of...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825200/metformin-hydroch...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/825281/losartan-potassiu...

These are some of the most prescribed drugs in America, the trend is quite clear. Every drug except albuterol and levothyroxine has decreased dramatically in price. Levothyroxine's patent expired this year so there will be some time before prices go down. Albuterol is expensive because the inhaler had to change the propellant to remove CFCs and there is a new patent on the hydrofluoroalkanes (HFAs) that has yet to expire.

pg_bot··on Big Pharma claims lower prices means giving up miracle medications. Ignore them
Would you rather live in the world where we don't have a solution or the world where the solution is expensive now but will eventually become cheap?
pg_bot··on Researchers develop treatment that can kill glioblastoma cells in brain pathway
I think we're on the verge of drastically increasing survival rates for people with Glioblastoma. It's an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer with an estimated average survival rate of 8 months and a 5 year survival rate of 6.9 percent.

I've been following the case of Dr Richard Scolyer who is using himself as a guinea pig to treat his own Glioblastoma. He and Dr Georgina Long created a plan based on their expertise in treating melanoma. So far the results have been fairly spectacular as his brain scans have shown no recurrence over a year after his diagnosis. I hope one day that they both share the Nobel prize in medicine.

https://x.com/profrscolyermia

https://x.com/ProfGLongMIA

pg_bot··on Rent control effects: An almost complete review of the literature
There are many situations where renting is advantageous to owning.
pg_bot··on Database Design for Google Calendar: A Tutorial
In practice performance problems are a nonissue. Your API should consist of start time and duration because that is how people think about appointments and meetings. (An hour long meeting starting at noon) It's a pain to write a UI that updates two pieces of information when one piece of information changes. If you are truly worried about query performance you can denormalize the data before saving by storing start/end times as a datetime range field, but it still makes no sense to expose that in your API.
pg_bot··on Database Design for Google Calendar: A Tutorial
You don't want to store two dates for an event. It's easier to store the start time of the event and a duration for the event. This will make the logic for updating your events simple. You can always calculate the end time of the event based off the start and duration.
pg_bot··on Gold recovery from e-waste by food-waste amyloid aerogels
I think you could extract Vanadium from seawater by farming sea squirts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanabin

pg_bot··on ElixirNitpicks
The following code could be written much better by using the cond operator.

    with {:is_email, true} <- {:is_email, is_email_address?(email)},
         {:is_available, true} <- {:is_available, EmailAddresses.is_available(email)} do
      ...
    else
      {:is_email, false} ->
        {:error, :bad_request}

      {:is_available, false} ->
        {:error, :conflict}
    end

    cond do 
      !email_address?(email) -> {:error, :bad_request}
      !EmailAddresses.available?(email) -> {:error, :conflict}
      true -> {:ok, email}
    end
This gets rid of unnecessary duplication, and I think is easier to understand.
pg_bot··on Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware
Context for those out of the loop.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/30/tesla-shares-slide-after-jud...

pg_bot··on Lithium-ion battery pack prices hit record low
Saving money. If it is cheaper to generate your own power, a lot of people are going to do it. Practically speaking, you would probably still need (and pay for) a connection to the grid but just not need to use it. This isn't a reject society and live alone in the woods kind of appeal. You are going to be spending money on power for the foreseeable future, why not minimize that expense if you can?

Also in developing countries where there isn't a reliable power grid, would you just skip that step entirely? I know some places in Nepal where they have daily rolling blackouts and it is extremely annoying.

pg_bot··on Lithium-ion battery pack prices hit record low
I'm trying to think of the second order effects of solar and battery storage if it becomes cheap enough to run your entire house without the grid. Wouldn't it make sense to design houses with DC power from the ground up? Why go through the inefficient inverter if you are generating DC from a solar panel and using DC power internally in all of your appliances?

Assuming $3-5 per watt fully installed and a 6 kWh solar panel array. Plus and additional $10k worth of batteries, you should be able to run most houses 24/7/365 off solar power. So a $40k investment should be around what you need to generate all the power for your home for ~25 years. (Assuming you average 30 kWh used per day) This is pretty close to being a no brainer for certain areas of the country with high electricity prices. (California, Hawaii)

pg_bot··on Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search (2020)
I've never been able to get this feature to work on iOS.
pg_bot··on Pg_bm25: Elastic-Quality Full Text Search Inside Postgres
Meilisearch seems like it is the best open source option.

https://www.meilisearch.com/

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