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skueon I can't keep up with idiomatic Rust

> Rust's day-1 error handling story was significantly worse than that of most recent languages (e.g. Swift, Typescript, Kotlin, Dart, just going down Wikipedia's list of significant languages). And it's not clear what Rust gains from that...

Not sure I understand... All these other recent languages you mentioned were released after Rust, so Rust couldn’t have benefited from them on day 1. The opposite happened: most of these other languages took design lessons from the languages that preceded them, including Rust.

skueon Hospitals Tell Doctors They’ll Be Fired If They Speak Out About Lack of Gear

> The AMA puts a cap on the supply of doctors (via # of residency slots they allow)

This is factually untrue.[1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4978854/

skueon Hospitals Tell Doctors They’ll Be Fired If They Speak Out About Lack of Gear

Doctors don’t enforce shortages. No one is stopping new medical schools from being created, it’s just not a trivial thing to do.

I’d actually argue that physicians haven’t yet fully grasped their power. Historically, many docs worked in independent clinics or small practice groups. That made them subject to antitrust law when teaming up to negotiate en masse against a large insurer, for example.

Today, with all of the consolidation over the past decade, many have become employees. This has made them less powerful in many ways... except, now they can unionize without any of those old antitrust concerns.

skueon NASA reveals what the final X-57 all-electric X-plane will look like

Completely depends on the organ. Kidneys can survive outside the body for 1-2 days, while heart and lungs only survive 4-6 hours and are typically transported via ground or air ambulance, depending on distance.

Source: https://www.organdonor.gov/about/process/matching.html#expan...

skueon Open UI

They aren’t the same thing at all. This isn’t trying to be a framework, it’s simply a lexicon.

skueon Open UI

That’s not what this is about at all. This is simply looking around at people using benches, stools, stumps, and piles of rocks and suggesting we come up with a word to describe something constructed that you sit on... then looking at the nicknames currently being used and highlighting the most common. It has nothing to do with prescribing any particular style of chair.

skueon Open UI

> I regret to inform you that SOAP's death has been limited to open source. Enterprise continues to eat it up.

How apropos. A behind-the-times punishment for being so behind-the-times? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_out_the_mouth_with_soa...

skueon WireGuard 1.0

Too bad that announcement was posted first, since it doesn’t have this marvelous typo:

> Earlier this evening, Linus released [1] Linus 5.6...

skueon Seattle-area voters to vote by smartphone in district election

This is for a voluntary county board position without regulatory power that by statute needs to be elected by March when no one is paying attention. So someone decided to try this out.

OTOH, the WA Sec. of State opposes mobile/online elections due to security concerns, as does her upcoming political opponent [1] and FWIW the Seattle Times recently wrote an Editorial also opposing the practice. [2]

Bottom line, this hardly constitutes some trend that WA state is moving towards, just something set up by a county office that is otherwise drawing skepticism.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/secretary...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/resist-push-...

skueon Parachuting for Charity: A 5-year audit (1999)

This study was published in 1999 and while it is a wonderful example of incentives gone awry, it’s also dated.

Per the article, “All charity parachuting in our study was apparently done by static line methods from 2500± 3000 feet.” [1] Static line parachuting means the participant jumps solo and a cord automatically opens the parachute for them when they exit the plane. It’s very different than skydiving tandem, which is far more common these days and much safer.

That still doesn’t mean that skydiving for charity makes any sense financially. It strikes me as absurd that people who want to skydive collect money from friends under the expectation that a small percentage of the donated funds make their way to a charity —- £30 per jump for the NHS, though apparently more for other organizations. [2]

But then this comes from a country that is trying to convince the rest of the world that wearing a clown nose for a day is a charitable act. [3]

Y’all can’t just give for the sake of giving? ;-)

[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1999-lee.pdf

[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3224643/Why-tell-ch...

[3] https://rednoseday.org/

skueon How to Track President Trump

I wonder if the title’s reference to “Trump” has prevented this from appearing on the front page and from getting more votes? It’s not a political issue and probably warrants more discussion.

Not sure how best to get dang/sctb’s attention <- aside from hoping they monitor their mentions.

skueon Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

Congrats on the launch. This looks like one of those great ideas that works so much better than the old way that it feels obvious in hindsight.

I’m curious how you handle different monitor resolutions?

skueon Trump proposes forcing hospitals to disclose discount rates with insurers

Sure, the space is called Revenue Cycle Management.

OODA Health already has some major partnerships/investments from providers and payers. https://www.ooda-health.com/

Lumedic was acquired last year by Providence St. Joseph, a large hospital system. https://lumedic.io/

skueon Health Insurers Make It Easy for Scammers to Steal Millions

For all those downvoting the parent:

https://www.psjhealth.org/news/2019/02/psjh-acquires-lumedic

I firmly believe blockchain is over hyped, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its potential use cases. Medical payers/providers are in fact giving it serious consideration.

skueon I was a 10x engineer and I’m sorry

You don’t even need to go to the level of a Bellard or Carmack to recognize the existence of 10x engineers. This pushback seems to derive from the egocentric assumption that 10x means “Ten times better than me.”

If we flip this around, does anyone doubt the existence of 1/10x engineers? I’m not referring to low end outliers who clearly can’t code. But I f you think through all the engineers you have known who have actually been employed and worked in the field, is there a 10x spread between the best and the mediocre-at-best?

Lots of folks are familiar with the Dunning-Krueger effect for what it says about the perspective of those with less experience/skill. However, it also postulates that people with more experience/skill also see the world incorrectly — from the other direction. They are prone to assume that most people are at least as skilled as they are.

This pushback against the notion of a 10x engineer seems like the perfect union of Impostor Syndrome meets Dunning-Krueger. We worry that we’re near the bottom of the curve due to our own insecurities while being partly blinded to the deltas in skill both above us and below us.

Edit: Clarified that I was interpreting 10x as highest to low-average, not highest to lowest outlier.

skueon Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

On a related note, has anyone else had issues with the iPad Smart Keyboard after 15+ months?

Bought mine for the 10.5 iPad Pro and at some point I started getting Accessory Not Recognized messages, then it would stop working unless I removed and reattached it, then it finally died entirely.

There are reports of similar experiences in the Apple Support Communities and on Reddit, and Apple reportedly created a program to replace some of the keyboards [1]. But when I contacted Apple I was told my keyboard was out of warranty — effectively $180 of electronic waste after just over one year of use.

[1] https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/17/05/08/apple-offe...

skueon Gut microbes eat medication

> After studying pharmacology and medicinal chemistry, I lost a lot of faith in our current pharmacological medicine.

My reaction was just the opposite. There are so many aspects of physics or other physical sciences that we take as basic knowledge and learn in grade school, but which were discovered years ago by some of the greatest thinkers of the past. It’s deceptively easy to wonder what it would have been like to live back then when the science was young and discoveries seemed more readily available. When you didn’t need to build a massive supercollider to validate theories. Of course much of this thinking is probably a fallacy... hundreds of years from now people will think similar thoughts about where we are.

And yet medicine quite clearly seems at this earlier stage. Think about how far we’ve come in just the last century... we’ve only known about antibiotics for 100 years and the structure of DNA for half that long. That’s not a reason to be dismissive, medicine right now is in its early days and the people doing the research are pioneers. Medicine today has so many opportunities for smart people to contribute.

skueon The Euthanasia That Wasn’t

Like being forced by the gods to do nothing but repeatedly push a boulder up a mountain for all of eternity?

The Myth of Sisyphus is the name of Camus’ book about suicide, and Sisyphus’ plight is its central metaphor.

skueon Amazon makes 14 cents from every Lyft ride

Both Lyft & Uber have begun partnering with healthcare providers to provide non-urgent patient transportation.[1]

[1] https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/lyft-announces-integra...

skueon Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages

No. HIPAA only covers (applies to) certain entities like hospitals and insurers, not the USPS. And there’s an explicit “conduit exception” that allows covered entities to distribute protected health information via non-covered entities such as the postal service.

The FTC regulates the privacy of sharing personal data including health info by entities not covered by HIPAA, such as personal health apps. So if a govt agency wanted to investigate this, it would probably be the FTC using basic privacy laws. HIPAA wouldn’t apply.

(IANAL, just have a fair amount of experience with HIPAA & HITECH)

Edit: Added more details.

skueon Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

No. Look at the following tweet. He explicitly says that he hasn’t enabled this and posted a screenshot of his settings:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Gabriel__Lewis/status/96312181416...

Update: Matthew Green just experienced the same thing, in the midst of tweeting about the security implications of abusing 2FA phone numbers this way:

https://mobile.twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/9637666614...

skueon Humble Bundle Books: Functional Programming

Edie Freedman came up with the concept and chose the early animal prints.

See: http://animals.oreilly.com/origin-of-species/

skueon Funny or Die's Matt Klinman: “Facebook has destroyed independent digital comedy”

> At the point where he said there should be a law that recommendations need to be made by humans it’s like dude...

You’re taking him way too literally. “There oughta be a law” is a figure of speech.

skueon LuLu: An open-source macOS firewall that blocks unknown outgoing connections

1. The OSI tried to get a trademark for “open source” in their early days and failed.[1] They don’t own the term, and arguing fine distinctions like this does nothing but promote flame wars.[2]

2. The developer put a lot of effort into this and was generous enough to make this available for free with the source code open. Please be gracious, because belligerent feedback like this is what causes people to sometimes reconsider making software free or open source.[3]

3. You also falsely claim Patrick Wardle is aware of the issue and refuses to change it, even though he hasn’t commented on the issue you cited, at least as I write this.

[1] https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

[2] cf. every discussion board or mailing list where issues like this have come up.

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/comment/do1...

skueon LuLu: An open-source macOS firewall that blocks unknown outgoing connections

In the FAQ, bottom of page:

> Do I need LuLu if I've turned on the built-in macOS firewall?

> Yes! Apple's built-in firewall only blocks incoming connections. LuLu is designed to detect and block outgoing connections, such as those generated by malware when the malware attempts to connect to it's command & control server for tasking, or exfiltrates data.

skueon LuLu: An open-source macOS firewall that blocks unknown outgoing connections

Based only on glancing through the linked product page... here are some LS features LuLu currently lacks:

* Reporting domain names rather than just reporting destination IPs.

* Inbound monitoring & rules

* Temporary rules that auto-expire (e.g. Once, next 15 mins, etc.)

* Fine-grained control over protocol/domain/subdomain in blocking rules (at least when prompted)

* Graphical monitor of recent blocked/allowed traffic

* Profiles to easily change rule sets based on network, etc.

* Unclear whether LuLu provides special handling of connection attempts during startup, software updates, etc.

* Graphical installer, polish, support, etc.

...OTOH, LuLu does provide features I don’t recall seeing in LS:

* Icon indicating whether originating binary has been signed by system/third party/unsigned

* Button to optionally check binary hash against VirusTotal

skueon GM plans to release cars with no steering wheel in 2019

1. They may want to introduce change gradually.

2. They’re probably well aware of the ample research into motion sickness. Not being able to see the direction of travel appears to increase the risk of symptoms for many.

Sample citations (you can find many more via a Google Scholar search):

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cyriel_Diels/publicatio...

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/39135666/Die...

skueon The Objective-C Runtime and Swift Dynamism

When arguing against a “common misconception,” one typically provides a source.

You seem to be saying that Apple’s claims are not only wrong, but ObjC is somehow faster despite having to do more work. Swift has no runtime method table lookups, no extra objc_msgSend calls, better ability to analyze and inline code, no retain/release dance for code with value semantics, etc. Every benchmark I’ve seen shows Swift faster for these reasons.

skueon The Objective-C Runtime and Swift Dynamism

> Before we start, Objective-C is a runtime-oriented language, which means that all of the links between your methods and variables and classes are deferred to the last moment possible to when your app is actually running, and this gives you great flexibility because you can change those links. The alternative, where Swift is most of the time, is compiletime-oriented languages. So in Swift everything is a bit more harder bound, and you get more safety, but it’s less flexible.

> This is what this debate was all about.

Not just safety, but also performance. Swift offers significant performance gains when you don’t need the dynamism. Swift lets you opt into dynamic features (as he later explains), and you can seemlessly interact with Objective C on Mac platforms. But you don’t have to pay the penalty for dynamism in the vast majority of your code that doesn’t use these features.

Edited: I also pointed out some additional mistakes in the post, but removed that because this comment got too long.

skueon Is Anyone Good Enough for an H1-B Visa?

> We didn't choose this. A majority of voters voted against the current administration.

That’s a cop out. Of course we did. The electoral college is our system. If it doesn’t work, then who but us should fix it? Even if you believe the last election was influenced in underhanded ways, we collectively fell for it.

But instead of working together, we’ve become a nation of finger pointers: Not my problem, someone else screwed up.