Readit NewsI’ve tried 13”, 14”, 15”, and 16”. 14” is where it’s at.
Having a huge screen on a super-light, super skinny laptop is so handy for portability and all the extra screen real-estate is great for a developer. Its difficult to go back to a 14-inch.
I wish more laptop manufacturers would make ultra-lights with large screens.
You’re right about what happened, but not for the wholly right reasons. The hospital charged you so much because they have to also negotiate prices with insurance companies (health insurance companies are just for-profit government agencies, they don’t actually serve a market value today) and pay for those who are uninsured. There are for-profit healthcare systems of course, but that’s only part of the story.
If the cost of the doctor’s time and the medication was $100, they can now cover let’s say 3 uninsured people for $300 each then take the other $300 you paid and book that against someone going bankrupt or a difference in negotiated cost with the insurance agency.
In America we have privatized profit for the insurance companies and socialized loss. They deny a claim, book a profit, the person with the claim doesn’t get treatment, then can’t work, then needs care, and society pays for it.
Purely from a cost perspective we should just go to single payer, but we won’t do that because who is going to the the politician that causes 10s of thousands in job losses of highly paid white collar professionals?
I had a nasty ear-infection, could hardly walk, and was in no state to argue, but the nurse gave me dozens of what they said were completely "normal procedure" blood tests from their in-house lab, which the doctor would have profited from directly. I told them I was leaving the next day and wouldn't get any results if they took a day, but they ignored and persisted.
I looked at the bill later and they were for loads and loads of completely unrelated conditions, diabetes, HIV, etc... a useless waste.
It was price gouging from the doctor directly pure and simple, no insurance providers involved, but I'm sure that normally that also adds an extra layer of silly costs.
In Australia its carefully regulated what a doctor can charge, and its a different company that does any tests, or gives out medication, the doctor or company can't profit directly from sending patients off for more testing, or for prescribing medication.
His premiums at that time for professional negligence were $1m per year. He would have to keep paying those premiums for 18 years after his retirement.
Same for every obstetrician.
Professional fees then must be set to cover those insurance premiums.
Has that changed for the better in the USA? Seems very unlikely to be the same in Europe.
Obstetrics is obviously a illustrative case. How are the professional negligence premiums across the other specialties?
Why does the effect of the US legal system never seem to come up much in the “US healthcare is insanely expensive” discussion? Is the effect of it really not significant?
So insurance costs may be a factor, but its doubtful that its a large factor in healthcare costs, they largest factor is by far the public vs private system.
I experienced US healthcare when I went to visit a doctor in the US for a simple (obvious) ear infection. I was charged $600 USD for a five minute consult because the doctor wanted to milk as much $$$ from me as he could, giving me lots of unrelated/pointless blood tests (which were pointless because I was flying out the next day and wouldn't get the results).
In Australia it would have been a $65 fee paid by the government, and $10 for the antibiotics, around 1/10th of the US costs.
The problem in the US is that doctors and hospitals are incentivised to give patients unnecessary tests and medication, because it inflates their bills, and they make more profit.
I've noticed the same thing happening in Australia with private vets & vet hospitals because they are less regulated. They try and talk you into a lot of unnecessary procedures, test, and drugs because they make more profit, and the industry is not where near as well regulated as healthcare.
At least with a vet you can usually shop around, when you are sick often you cannot.
I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. The llm is there to rapidly synthesize the universe of information.
You still need to 1) have solid fundamentals in order to have an intuition against that synthesis, and 2) be experienced enough to translate that synthesis into actionable outcomes.
If youre lacking in either, youre at the same whims of copypasta that have always existed.
I think that its because often the libraries you use are niche or have a a few similar versions, the LLM really commonly hallucinated solutions and would continually suggest that library X did have that capability. I think because often in hardware projects you often hit a point where you can't do something or you need to modify a library, but the LLM tries to be "helpful" and it makes up a solution.
I don't like these types of mandates because it distorts the market. Politicians get to say "we provided X people with internet service and we didn't use a dollar of tax payers' money". Which sounds nice, but you can't really get something for nothing. This will increase costs for ISPs and likely increase prices for others. How much? Who knows!
If politicians feel that low income New Yorkers deserve reduced cost or free internet, give them a voucher for internet. Better yet, figure out how much of a voucher they would need and give them a check. Let them decide whether they want to buy internet, or better food or housing or whatever else. Or if you go the voucher router, giving them options lets ISPs compete for this. Don't think taxpayers should pay? Make a special ISP tax and give it to these people to make it budget neutral.
Not to mention the red tape and abuse this will create. I really don't want me ISP to track my income.
What they decided on is the worst possible option as it results in hidden costs and bad incentives. The only people its good for (compared to the alternatives), is politicians who can by dictate just seemingly create free things for people for no cost.
We can't have true competition with utilities, because we'd need six sets of pipes into every apartment just to have six competing providers, so the government needs to step in and regulate utilities, because they are a natural monopoly.
Previously a Dwarven wizard was just a really bad choice, and you'd be noticeably less powerful than say an Elven wizard so no-one ever played one.
Now an Elven Wizard for instance has a few bits and pieces that might make them a bit better, but still leave a Dwarven Wizard as a viable choice.
This makes the game far more interesting in every way: players have more interesting builds, more character choices, and can play whatever combinations that they want.
A lot of Ai guys are X with cool stuff and still a ton of great posts in Japanese if you can read it.
Mainly for the extra features, apps & integrations that Bluesky offers:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/11/25/companies/b...
So not great. But not terrible. Solid Dyatlov.
It doesn't work if you have notifications off or "do not disturb" on, so I can't log on to anything in the evenings.