GlibMonkeyDeath (u/GlibMonkeyDeath)

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/selvan

GlibMonkeyDeath · 5 days ago

I'd encourage people to look at the history of Fujifilm (the Japanese peer to Kodak) to see why they didn't fail, but Kodak did.

https://petapixel.com/why-kodak-died-and-fujifilm-thrived-a-...

TL;DR: Fujifilm diversified quickly, Kodak clung to the film business for far too long.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Vertical Integration Allows US Insurers to Bypass the 85% Profit Cap taprootlogic.substack.com... · Posted by u/kmundy

kmundy · 10 days ago

Well, the subsidy just buys us some time to stabilize the risk pool. Meanwhile, the ACO+Factory model is emerging, which flips the incentives; changes the way the product is consumed, so we stop overpaying in the first place.

GlibMonkeyDeath · 9 days ago

I agree we need to remove the perverse incentives across the entire system. I also agree the current ACA subsidies are a band-aid.

It's incredibly frustrating because this is a solved problem - even just fixing the most egregious flaws in the ACA would be a huge improvement. I am very skeptical, though, that in my lifetime American voters will ever be unified enough again to take on the de facto doctors union, the health insurer oligopoly, and the pharmaceutical companies, all of whom currently benefit from the broken system, and basically control the government top to bottom.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Vertical Integration Allows US Insurers to Bypass the 85% Profit Cap taprootlogic.substack.com... · Posted by u/kmundy

kmundy · 15 days ago

You are right about the math of the 'Death Spiral.' If we simply deregulated AHPs without a safety net, healthy people would flee, leaving the sick in a collapsing ACA pool. That is exactly what happened in the pre-ACA 'bad old days.'

But my proposal isn't just 'Deregulation.' It pairs AHPs with a specific mechanism designed to stop that spiral: Invisible High-Risk Pools (The Maine Model).

The 'Maine Model' allows insurers to 'cede' their highest-risk patients to a state-funded reinsurance pool. The patient keeps their same card and doctor (hence 'Invisible'), but the risk is offloaded.

The Data: Before the ACA, Maine implemented this. Anthem requested a 20% rate hike due to adverse selection. After the pool was implemented, the rate hike dropped to under 2%.

This shows we can protect the sick without forcing the healthy to pay $25k/year premiums to an oligopoly.

Regarding other countries: I’d love to write that article! But most of them (like Germany or Switzerland) succeed by strictly regulating prices or supply. In the US, we have the worst of both worlds: we cap insurer profits (via MLR) but leave costs unchecked, which actually incentivizes inflation. My 'Three-Legged Stool' proposal is an attempt to engineer a path out of that specific American trap.

GlibMonkeyDeath · 10 days ago

>The Data: Before the ACA, Maine implemented this. Anthem requested a 20% rate hike due to adverse selection. After the pool was implemented, the rate hike dropped to under 2%.

>This shows we can protect the sick without forcing the healthy to pay $25k/year premiums to an oligopoly.

So in effect give the oligopoly tax money so they keep their rates the same for the sick and the well? Isn't that what Congress is basically currently fighting over (federal money vs. state?)

Congress also intentionally removed the unpopular requirement to have to buy insurance (either through your employer or the ACA market), essentially re-creating one of the death-spiral conditions in the first place. It's been the Republican goal all along to get the ACA to die in a death spiral so we can go back to forcing people into medical bankruptcy, like God intended.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Ask HN: Co-Founder Salary Dispute · Posted by u/throwawayround

throwawayround · 10 days ago

Our arrangement over the past year was implied, so yes, effectively a handshake agreement. I don’t have an issue with him taking a salary when we can afford it. The problem is that for the company to maintain runway and keep me full-time, he would likely need to forgo a salary that he doesn’t actually need.

What confused me was how he framed it. First it was about “recouping some of his investment,” and when I pushed back that this isn’t how early-stage compensation works, it shifted to “saving money for family and legacy.” Both are understandable personal goals, but taking salary for those reasons directly increases the company’s risk at a stage where survival comes first. That mismatch is what I’m trying to sort out.

GlibMonkeyDeath · 10 days ago

Again, forget about who "needs" what. The basic problem is that you don't have a written agreement. Time to negotiate with your co founder and get something signed. I obviously don't know anything about each of you, but if you are truly each contributing 50% to the success of the company then your angel investor co-founder is not getting 50% of the value at present, so has, in this scenario, a point.

I've seen lots of best friend co-founders end up not being able to be in the same room together eventually. Most of these situations boil down to fundamental misunderstandings that could have been addressed at the beginning. That's why signed employee agreements (where compensation, equity, vesting, and expectations are clearly laid out in black and white) are a must.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Ask HN: Co-Founder Salary Dispute · Posted by u/throwawayround

GlibMonkeyDeath · 10 days ago

Personally, I think you may have already gotten a great deal if the angel/co-founder is willing to do a 50-50 split and not take a salary (or get paid in equity in lieu of salary.) Is your co-founder now demanding to be paid in salary/equity after they agreed (I assume this is written down somewhere?) otherwise? If this is a "handshake agreement" situation, then I guess you are in the process of learning an important business lesson...

That said, fairness in business has nothing to do with your or your co-founder's personal financial situation, other than the constraints of reality (i.e., you simply can't work without a minimum amount of salary.) Frankly your co-founder should be paid in something (equity) if they are not drawing a salary. Theoretically, ownership and compensation should reflect what each of you are bringing to the company. In fact, your co-founder is actually getting compensated less than you while investing their own money - that means you are already better compensated than them. Is that "fair"? Maybe, maybe not, you guys have to agree.

But get a written agreement - if this already exists than just stand by it.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Vertical Integration Allows US Insurers to Bypass the 85% Profit Cap taprootlogic.substack.com... · Posted by u/kmundy

GlibMonkeyDeath · 17 days ago

I agree that the way the US pays for health care is completely broken, but your framing of the Association Health Plan rule change is strange to me.

Association Health Plans are a way to weaken the ACA, so Republicans can finally get back to the days of underwritten health insurance (i.e., de-facto denials for preexisting conditions via unaffordable insurance costs.) It has been in legal limbo for a while, and the Department of Labor finally (rightfully, in my opinion) seriously limited the scope of these plans.

AHP's are able to charge based on the "health" of the group, and aren't subject to covering the ACA essential items (like, say, emergency, maternal, or rehabilitation care.) This would encourage groups of "healthy" people to form low-cost plans that lacked basic coverage, and would leave "sick" people on ACA plans, which of course would go up in cost because of this.

We saw this in the bad old pre-ACA days. It's the classic death spiral that made most "high risk" pools basically non-functional before the ACA. The only option was to have a job through an employer with a large enough group plan that your rates wouldn't skyrocket. Otherwise, the option was usually bankruptcy.

Of course, literally every other modern democratic nation besides the US has figured out how to provide health insurance in one way or another without bankrupting their citizens. Maybe you could do another article showing how other countries systems avoid the US problems.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Don't throw away your old PC–it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy howtogeek.com/turned-old-... · Posted by u/makerdiety

eloisius · 18 days ago

I do too, but I’m looking to get proper solution soon. A Pi is a pretty lousy NAS. It can’t even power two drives so you can’t have redundancy unless you get a powered USB hub. And even then, I used one of those for a while and the drive connected to it prematurely failed. I think maybe because the power supply wasn’t stable.

GlibMonkeyDeath · 18 days ago

I have a Pi4 running Raid 1 NAS with two SSD drives, and an externally powered USB hub. Unfortunately, it crashes every 6 months or so and needs a power cycle. Haven't been able to track down why, but I also suspect a power supply issue.

Initially I naively tried to run the two drives right off the USB3 ports in the Pi, and that basically crashed within a day - but that is of course because I was exceeding the power draw. An external hub and supply helped, but didn't fully fix the issue.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Controversial genetics testing startup Nucleus Genomics raises $14M Series A techcrunch.com/2025/01/30... · Posted by u/paulpauper

GlibMonkeyDeath · 19 days ago

FTA:

"When asked if linking things like blue eyes, blonde hair, and IQ could be interpreted as eugenics, he clarified with a laugh, 'I said brown hair!'

Then, miming the same hand motion that Elon Musk performed following President Trump’s inauguration, Asparouhov joked, 'My heart goes out to you.'"

Uhhh, _what_?

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker wealthfolio.app/?v=2.0... · Posted by u/a-fadil

ryandrake · a month ago

Quicken is getting even more and more disappointing.

Used to be, you'd use what Quicken calls "direct connect" where the client software itself connects to your bank's servers and pulls down your transactions and balances. They also had this "quicken connect" where the client software connects to Quicken servers, who, in turn, contact your bank--making Intuit an unwanted middleman. Slowly, but consistently, Quicken has been dropping "direct connect" support and coercing their users to go the middleman route.

I, too, have been looking for an alternative to Quicken, but: 1. I don't want to have to go to each bank's crappy web site and download a crappy CSV to import, and 2. I also don't want the software developer inserting itself into what should be a data transfer between me and my bank.

The Holy Grail personal finance software would 1. be free and open source, 2. download data directly from financial institutions without CSVs or a middleman and 3. store the data in an open format like sqlite that I can query and manipulate outside of the application.

GlibMonkeyDeath · a month ago

If you can be a little flexible on (2), then Beancount hits most of the Holy Grail points. The ledger format is literally text (it is plain-text accounting after all) but there is a query language the works really well.

I end up saving CSV's locally and importing the transactions from there (no hand entry, but I still need the intermediate download step.) I don't find it that too burdensome since I don't have a zillion different accounts.

[This](https://reds-rants.netlify.app/personal-finance/the-five-min...) project (I am not affiliated in any way) claims to automate ledger update even further.

GlibMonkeyDeath commented on Germany: States Pass Porn Filters for Operating Systems heise.de/en/news/Youth-Pr... · Posted by u/trallnag

GlibMonkeyDeath · a month ago

Whenever a new attempt at limiting exposure to what is obviously harmful content (e.g. explicitly violent content, and anything to do with minors), I always see the same patterns of argument against the attempt:

(1) It's the parent's fault.

(2) Freedom! No government censorship!

(3) This is technically impossible to control (the fix is worse than the problem.)

While each point can be argued, I think the debate needs to be framed a different way. We are facing a dosage and availability problem, just as in comparing, in order of harmfulness: coffee, alcohol, and heroin.

We know what happens when a harmful substance suddenly becomes widely available. Do people say "hey I drank some beer when I was a kid so all drugs are fine, including opioids, in unlimited amounts"? And, "if your kids gets addicted to opioids, it's the parent's fault for not keeping it away from them" (when your trusted doctor prescribed them first?) Or, "people are free to do what they want, and it is technically impossible to control the supply of opioids anyway, so why bother"?

The unfiltered internet is FLOODED with violent, disturbing pornographic images that literally NO ONE should ever see. It's not some sort of law of nature that this content exists - humans made it and put it there, and the wide availability and potency of this content is the problem. It isn't seeing someone's naked behind in a context-appropriate scene in a movie (that's closer to coffee in the above example.)

As it turns out, I think this law is a good step, but far from complete or perfect (or even good.). Requiring each individual to personally set up 100% effective filters is an impossible burden. For sure, when I had young kids a decade ago, I tried, and I also talked to my kids about it. But how about also that drug dealer isn't allowed to sneakily approach my kids with free samples? And I can reasonably expect that my kids aren't forced to walk through the floor of a casino, with all the flashing lights and prostitutes, on their way to school? Since most school work requires the internet these days, that's what it feels like as a parent.

I have two adult kids, one doing well (despite visiting some questionable sites as a youth, I found out later), and one struggling, in part from the crap that is found on the internet. I know many of my peers with young adult children are telling the same story - at least one of their kids is way off the rails with a serious real-life problem, usually fueled by the internet casino in some way (and before you tell me we were all bad parents, these are now adults in their 20's and 30's, who mostly seemed normal and well-prepared after high school.)

Now, I am not completely blaming the internet, an excellent tool that has improved many things in my lifetime, for these outcomes. But let's not kid ourselves - there is a huge distinction between, say, Google Maps, and animal torture videos.

This is a hard problem, with lots of nuance and gray areas. It's the entire reason that laws and courts exist - sometimes you really do just need to sit down with a group of people and come to some sort of solution, however imperfect, and iterate to make it better.

Because clearly something has to happen - the opioids coming through the municipal internet pipes aren't going to be completely remediated with a personal water filter. This law provides for free water filters, but ones that won't work everywhere without prohibition-like enforcement (e.g. open source, DIY distributions of Linux.) It's part of the solution, far from perfect, and far from complete. But we are done doing nothing.