pyoung

I am actually interested in hearing what your alternatives are. Opponents of ACA have been extremely tight lipped and/or vague about alternatives which generally suggests that they do not have any.

And just because a website rollout didn't go as planned does not mean that the program is fairing poorly. There have already been a number of key changes that have had a positive impact (a ton of my friends were able to maintain health coverage throughout the recession thanks to the age limit increase (26) for dependents). It's not perfect, but doing nothing was not an option simply because it would be a least a decade or more before the issue could have been addressed again.

I think we are starting to dig into the weeds a bit too much. I am well aware of how insurance works, and how single payer systems contrast to the US system. What the OP was trying to point out was that free market economics can break down in certain situations, and health care is a prime example.

"If it floats or flies..."

My guess is that these are not permanent structures. Barges are not particularly suited to harsh open ocean conditions, and as others mentioned, there are some pretty heavy regulations against 'building out' into the bay. The secrecy of it hints at a marketing ploy.

I think you are taking his argument too literally. Using your own examples, someone who chooses a treatment with a $500k/QALY is probably suffering from the same sense of urgency/price insensitivity as the guy bleeding out on the street. Just because that person has some time to shop around, doesn't mean that they aren't getting price gouged. When someones health/life is on the line they are not going to act rationally.

Does the ACA address QALY? Seems like it might make sense to tie health insurance coverage to that metric. I would be more than happy to pay for coverage that covered the low end of the spectrum if it would mean lower premiums.

If you think the ACA should be repealed, and you do not have a suggestion as to what should replace it, then you are essentially in support of the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans a year. The ACA isn't perfect, I would have preferred single payer, but people were dying from lack of health care affordability and something needed to be done.

His logic is a bit off. In a truly efficient market (big if), if taxes were raised so significantly as to have a major impact on the rewards, then you would get a corresponding reduction in risk. I.E. Instead of having a 1 in 10 chance of a startup making it (as he claims in the post) you would probably end up with a 1 in 8 chance (or something similar) as the smaller rewards would, in theory, reduce the number of competitors. You would still end up with the same number of winners however.

In reality, there are a number of intangible benefits to starting a business that will overpower any reduction in startups due to higher taxes. Autonomy, excitement, and having a large impact all contribute in the decision to take the risk. Additionally, starting a business is still one of the only ways to strike it rich (unless you get lucky in the athlete/musician/actor department). So for most people with sizable ambitions, a reduction in rewards due to higher taxes will not have any meaningful impact on their decision.

> The only thing society should do is ensure everyone has the same rights in regard to the Law no matter how rich, how poor, how different you may be.

No, society should seek to maximize widespread improvements in quality of life and further humanities cause through social, technological, and cultural investments. Nature may be unfair, but just because we were born from it does not mean we have to model out society after it.

So this whole ordeal is pretty confusing. State law says that the public is allowed access to the coast below the median high tide line, but it does not necessarily give you the right to cross through private land. So technically, you could boat or swim over to Martins Beach and you wouldn't be trespassing. However because the previous owner allowed public access (for a small fee), I guess he set some precedent to access which is covered by state law (although apparently treaties with Mexico supercede that).

To make things even weirder, there are a bunch of cottages/houses on the property that are being leased to occupants (this was done by the previous owner). From what I understand, they have a few more years on those leases before they can be evicted (I am very rough on these details). So if you know someone in those units, they can hook you up with access to the beach (I think).

Bascially, it's a crappy situation for everyone. I get that Khosla wants some private beach front property to dump his money into. And really, the previous owner should have set up an easement (easements are the primary reason Malibu is still publicly accessible), although he probably would have got a much lower sales price. And of course, if Khosla gets his way, the public will be getting screwed over pretty bad. With the growing population, beach/coastal access is getting harder and harder (try going to the beach on a warm, sunny weekend, it can be a parking/traffic nightmare). Reducing the number of coastal access points is just going to make things worse, and it is going to continue to have an impact on the next generation of Californians.

No, it means that the NSA can, and has, collected data on just about anyone. What they do with it, my guess is not much unless there is an actual national security threat, is still up for question.

I wouldn't call it creepy, but for those that value their privacy, I would call it concerning. In the 'post-Snowden' era, it's not far fetched to imagine that the NSA et all would or could get their hands on the data.

Then again, if your privacy is so essential, you should probably already be wary of using any mobile device/web service to hail a taxi.

Well, they could start shoveling money over to politicians and lobbyists in order to create regulatory barriers to new entrants. Not exactly 'capitalism' in the truest sense of the definition, but certainly a common practice in our version of it.

I wish more companies realized this.

EDIT: To add a little more to the discussion. Instead of looking for the 'rockstar' or 'ninja', look for intelligent and ambitious individuals that might not have all of the necessary experience. This gives them the chance to grow into the position, and results in a more fulfilling work experience. The end result is someone who is more appreciative of their employer, and who will probably stick around longer than the 'rockstar' who is probably getting calls and e-mails from recruiters every other day.

That's is roughly my take on the situation. Until it is legal nationally, it is much too risky to make big money investments that would produce at scale, which would compensate for the thinner margins. At this point in time, you essentially have backyard growers competing against each other and those that stay on the black market can compete at lower prices and with higher margins.

If Washington and Colorado both make efforts to punish dealers who don't comply with state law, then that might push the risk-reward balance further to the legal side of things.

Seems like consensus is the tricky part. In the case of the affiliate link example, where all of the business is online, you could host the code under a version control system that allows people to fork and modify the code, but requires majority approval for that code to get deployed. Also if all of the financial assets are in BTC, you could have a corporate wallet that is governed similarly (so expenses and disbursements need to be approved by the majority). Of course this isn't exactly an 'autonomous' system, more like a decentralized system.

Hmm, I am trying to imagine what the system would look like. Seems like you could borrow some of the features of Bitcoin to create a control structure. Maybe require some type of proof-of-work/approval process by a network of shareholders to approve financial/business transactions. That way, anyone could attempt to participate on behalf of the corporation, but only transactions brought forward by trustworthy agents that are deemed to be beneficial for the corporation are approved. Essentially you would adopt the trust model of bitcoin but apply it more broadly.

Education may be on the brink of a massive wave of disruption. Websites like Coursera are the more obvious and visible examples of this disruption, but a more subtle but more powerful example are the significant number of tech workers who were self taught using tutorials and other internet resources to get the necessary job skills. Coupled with the exploding costs of higher education (at least in the US), I wouldn't be surprised if the education landscape looks very different in 20-30 years.

The issue is with the ability to issue currency, not with the social safety net. The sentence that you reference is a little misleading. What was implied, was that if the Eurozone had a federal government with the ability to issue currency, and that same government was also in charge of the social safety net (among other programs), then there wouldn't be as much of a crisis because they could print money to pay for the programs. Because the social safety nets are implemented by the individual countries, and those countries cannot print their own currency, they are currently forced to implement austerity measures. This is why recovery has been so difficult. The last thing you want to do is to cut spending during a recession.

I am a fan of this setup. I call them project logs. As you mentioned they are great for when you are away from the project for a while and need to get up to speed.

I'm interested. Have been looking for an OSS project to work on and have been wanting to pick up some more JS experience. I will keep an eye out for that repo.

Well, as an anecdote to why simplicity (at least in it's current form) is bad... All but one of my smoke detectors in my apartment are unplugged because they kept going off when I was cooking (would happen at least once a week). I was more likely to die or get injured from climbing onto a wobbly stool to turn off the 4 overly sensitive smoke detectors than I ever was in a fire. I am getting the feeling that this thread is split into two types of people, those who get a lot of false positives from their detectors and those who don't.

It's an intriguing, albeit risky move. Existing smoke detectors are pretty ugly with bad UI. There is little to no competition for the 'high end' retail market. With that said, current smoke detectors can be had for $10-20 bucks, and my guess is Nest will charge significantly more than that. Of course they can add a number of extra sensors/functionality to justify the costs. A CO sensor would be a good addition, maybe motion sensor (for security), temperature sensors (to provide more granular feedback to the thermostat), and maybe some other sensors to monitor indoor air quality (VOC's, radon). I am sure there are a few other things that can be thrown into the device to make it more useful (wifi repeater?).

All things considered, this is a pretty genius move. In the push to create 'smart homes' most of the attention has been on lighting, kitchen appliances, and entertainment systems. But one thing that has always bugged me was how do you get a refrigerator at the back of the house to communicate seamlessly with the wireless router in the front if the signal doesn't reach that far. I was thinking that mesh networking would play a big part, but even in an appliance saturated home, there could still be some dead spots. Well, smart smoke detectors might solve that, as they are in almost every room in the house! One issue I can forsee is that not all homes have hard-wired smoke detectors (which means power would be an issue, thus limiting what they can do with it).

EDIT: Seems like everyone is focusing on the UI comment. While I think that that is still an issue, I think the more exciting possibility is that a 'smart detector' could also provide nodes for a mesh network (or something similar), essentially providing a communication layer for appliances/devices in the home. If they go this route and they succeed, they could put themselves in a really good position competitively, as they would 'own' the networking layer.

This seems to be what I was looking for. Thanks, will play around with it today.

I am familiar(ish) with ipython. I think what Shiny seems to offer, that ipython doesn't, is a gui like interface to the data (whereas ipython provides the ability to interact directly with the code). I think shiny is a great idea when presenting to non-programmer types (whereas ipython seems to be designed as a presentation tool for more technical audiences).

Does anything like this exist for python/numpy/matplotlib?

I hope not. I would much prefer a future that relies more heavily on a sustainable form of energy.

I thought it was called "pot stuck". Chasing implies that you still have some hope (i.e. you are waiting for a card to drop to make your hand). "Pot stuck" is when you know you are beat, but you can't get yourself to fold because you have already committed so much to the pot.

I am surprised that they let you use your own machine. I am also surprised that they didn't get the code and data from you (or take you to court), as most employment contracts state that all work done by the employee is considered company property.

I don't think we should necessarily aim to make "serious tools" easy for people to get into. I am not saying that the UI shouldn't be intuitive, but rather that making something 'too easy' results in low barriers to entry and you end up with the wrong types of people using that tool. Excel is very useful (I use it much in the same way the OP does), but it has it's limitations. Because it is so easy to get into, it's easy for individuals lacking the proper experience to over extend themselves.

I think much of the explosion in data science jobs these last few years isn't really about "big data", but rather the fact that your typical corporate analyst does not have the experience to tackle mid range data analysis jobs because the only tool they have under their belts is Excel. What really is needed is a larger number of people with experience in statistics, scientific computing (Python, R etc..), and database systems. The current tools we have are fine, they just need to be used properly (well, we should always strive to improve our tools, but you get the idea).

I just glanced at the FAQ on the services website, and it sounds like the offers pop up from time to time, so you might not be able to watch one video after the other, you have to wait for them to come in. My guess is that the $0.60 day that they quoted is an average of sorts, with some days a bit higher and some lower. Regardless, that is not a lot of money, could take you two weeks of work to buy one pizza.

Is this an issue with conferences? My guess is that conferences would prefer to have interesting topics, and probably wouldn't care as much if the material was partially recycled. I have known people who presented early results of a study at one conference, and the final results at another. They were upfront about it, so it wasn't unethical, but I guess you could accuse them of resume padding. Personally, I would prefer a bunch of really interesting presentations at a conference with some recycled material, rather than a bunch of boring presentations that are all original (although if you attend a lot of conferences with the same people, you might prefer the latter I guess).