The technology itself hasn't changed, but almost everything else (owner, headcount, moderation, userbase etc. etc., not to mention the name of course) has changed dramatically...
Reddit-style? Why would you say reddit style, and not facebook-style, mastodon-style, or bluesky-style? At least Reddit is arranded thematically, and Twitter is arranged around individuals; this is quite a significant difference.
Interesting. To me, reddit is much closer to bulletinBB (as I remember from phpBB) than twitter. Reddit is like Hacker News in that regard.
What makes the reddit style more similar to Twitter than to bulletin board, in your mind? And do we have a modern example of the bulletinBB style since phpBB?
I don't really care to have an in depth discussion of self defense scenarios because I don't think that helps us understand common sense gun regulation any better. I'm sure you can find people making that argument if you are curious. My point is not that the AR-15 is an appropriate self defense weapon but that there are better arguments you could have made, and that the one you did make lost someone who is already sympathetic to your position.
I did find someone making that argument, you. I don't think asking for one example out of a hundred is asking for an in depth discussion, but if you claim this is too much for you then I won't push the issue.
He's saying that there's shampoo in the shower but he didn't use it (implied) -- however, the question wasn't about the presence of shampoo in the shower.
Aha, but that's not a rebuttal at all. The son is just stating a rather very loosely connected fact. If I was the father I'd immediately respond with "Yeah, and?".
You absolutely can measure "various aspects of consciousness" -- for example, "how much of the last 24h has this consciousness been awake" seems simple. So your definition seems kind of weak, could you be more precise?
Conversely, in your definition, is consciousness the only "thing" that you would describe as not being able to measure various aspects about it? Are there any other objects or concepts which you also cannot measure various aspects about? If yes, what differentiates those things from consciousness?
Can someone who fell for the 7%+ return explain which part you got tricked by? Was it just not registering as red flag to offer such a high, risk free rate? Or did you believe it wasn’t risk free, but thought the risk of it turning into this situation too low/zero?
How much of the decision was based on using the claimed FDIC insurance as a limiter on the downside risk?
I don’t mean any antagonism by these questions, I’m personally curious what is the thought process to get involved with this investment option.
Here’s a question I’ve wanted to ask — how many people just don’t take photos? I don’t have any philosophical bone to pick with it, I still take a photo if I need to reference something like where I parked; but I used to take photos on my phone at probably a normal frequency when I first became an adult, and I realized after a few years that I had never looked back on any photos I’d taken, so I just stopped taking them afterwards and never really felt any loss from not having them.
Incidentally, one unintended consequence of this behavior is realizing just how insignificant of a difference there is between smartphones even over 5+ years, if the camera is zero value add.
I’ll repost my comment from a recent thread, but this article is a surprise to me, I thought this had already been the case for years?
Reposted comment —
As far as I can tell, this is the correct way to handle this? I haven’t paid attention to any medical bills sent in the mail since I started working 15 years ago (I generally pay what they ask at the point of service), and I’ve never noticed any consequences (no denial of service anywhere, has never shown up in any way on my credit report, etc) — as far as my experience has shown, any bills sent after the fact are completely optional to pay.
If the hospital/provider sends your bill to a collections agency, then it can definitely show up on your reports. Especially so if you are actually sued for the debt, in which case the judgement is also a public record.
I've had this happen a couple times in the past when I was in treatment for cancer and underemployed. One agency reported the collections action and it went on my credit report (no indication that it's medical debt or anything else, so I imagine it would be up to the consumer to contest these things with the bureau?) Another collector didn't, so I never paid the bill or heard from them again!
>If the hospital/provider sends your bill to a collections agency, then it can definitely show up on your reports.
So I agree this was the impression I got in theory, but in practice I’ve never seen this happen. Why is there this mismatch? I check my credit reports once a year, there’s nothing showing up
It's entirely up to the hospital and the collectors they use (if they use any at all) how aggressively they pursue unpaid bills and whether they will involve your credit report to encourage people to pay. If you've mostly been going to the same places (or as another comment said, live somewhere where it's not as easy to send medical bills to collections), I can see it not really being a problem for you.
That's not really true, or at least it would be hard to say for sure. Every source saying that cites the same survey where a majority of respondents claimed that it was at least a contributing factor. Its actually really hard to get good breakdowns of the numbers on this.
It's sort of a straw that breaks the camel's back situation in most cases I would wager. It's less that medical debt caused bankruptcy than it, added on top of housing debt and car loans and credit cards and student loans etc., finally pushed a household to a point where getting out from under it all was too much.
Yeah, I don’t exactly disagree. Many years ago I worked at a debt counseling company and had occasion to look at the records and listen in on phone calls. It was really quite fascinating and heartbreaking. There definitely seemed to be a few common patterns. Big debts around car crashes and complicated births were not uncommon. But on the other hand almost everyone had a crazy mortgage and a pile of credit card debt too.
My ex had collectors calling her several times a day for months while she was disputing a bill. It probably depends on whether the hospital writes the bill off or sells it to
collectors.
I feel for your ex, I have three (3) in office visits covered by my insurance that are overdue as of August. I’ve had to go back and forth on the phone in a Kafka-hell to get my insurance to cover a covered visit because of some opaque clerical error (and I write medical insurance review software and I’m still confused as to who is to blame…). Insurance issued a payment last month finally, but the doctor has yet to recognize it so I still get reminders on being “late” for a bill I don’t ultimately owe.
I cannot imagine how infuriated I would be if I were being punished on my credit for someone else’s clerical error.
"I’ve had to go back and forth on the phone in a Kafka-hell to get my insurance to cover a covered visit because of some opaque clerical error"
the same happened to my ex. Something had gone wrong between hospital and insurance and both refused to fix it. Which left her in between trying to figure this out while trying to recover. It's really infuriating that they can treat people that way. Once you experience this together with billing for things that never happened and insurance refusing things they have to cover, you can only conclude that insurances and hospitals are basically fraudsters that for some reason are allowed to get away with it.
But I guess that’s my whole point is once they sell it to collectors it’s equivalent to the bill not existing? My confusion is around wondering if I’ve somehow fallen through the cracks and got lucky or other people have the same experience.
Why do other people pay bills they receive in the mail?
That's not always the case. Some hospitals will still keep a record of the unpaid bill on your account even after they pass the debt to a collector, and the collector will report whether you pay to the hospital.
The practice and billing parts of the system are usually mostly separate, so the person checking you in for your appointments may not know or have any way to see that you have unpaid bills and you won't necessarily be denied care for it, but there's no real standard here either.
I stopped getting any care at a large hospital near me's outpatient office because they had a bad habit of just sending bills to collections before my insurance responded to them, and then not updating anything once they did, so I'd get a debt collector notice and call the hospital, and they'd say "oh you paid that in full, you shouldn't be getting a notice" "well you should probably tell that to the debt collector".
Over and over again.
So if those started showing up on my credit report eventually, it'd be a significant impact, even though I was not involved in any failure to pay. Fortunately, they never did, but for many people, that's not true.
What you're probably seeing are the bills that your service provider sends to insurance, and then your insurance sending you a statement of benefits.
If these were real bills, they would keep sending them.
(Sometimes these can be amusing: I had surgery in 2011, and the hospital billed the insurance company $100,000. The insurance company responded that the agreed cost for services should be $20,000. The hospital ended up getting $20,000. IMO, $20,000 was plenty to pay everyone involved.)
Had a echocardiogram that I was told would be covered but insurance didn't pay, and they balance billed me for $5K. I never paid. Got handed to debt collectors. Wrote to them saying it isn't my debt and to cease contacting me.
If they take it to court I'll lawyer up and fight.
In any case, I gave neither debt collectors nor medical office my residential address or mobile number. I suggest you NEVER give your residential address to medical offices either, or they'll happily tell debt collectors where you sleep. Which personally I think should be a HEPA violation but apparently it isn't.
Give them a virtual mailbox or office address where you can receive mail.
I have someone in Las Vegas who stole my identity and is using it for medical services. I get collection notices for these services sent to my house (I'm not near Las Vegas) and I have to dispute every one of them. I've had to file police reports on it, but the Police in Vegas don't really care about helping me.
They are letting the interest build to such a magnitude that they can eventually sue your estate and easily recover the losses and more if you have assets at the time of death.
It would be surprising if this worked, given that a creditor who did not mitigate his damages reasonably and instead lurked, awaiting a windfall is not entitled to damages.
Do you live in California? I know CA has much more consumer-friendly restrictions on sending medical bills to collections. It essentially can’t happen in CA.
It’s absolutely incredible to me how much animosity unions have in the US and how self defeating the typical programmers attitude is (maybe this is just selection bias for HN?) — and I say this as someone who’s definitely not a laborer. But if I was one, I would hope I wouldn’t vote against my own class interests like it appears developers often do.
Luckily, even speaking openly against my own interests here is zero risk, I feel Americans are too far gone in their position against unions for it to ever be an issue for me personally.
Its a mix of crabs in a pot and 'f u I got mine' syndrome. I've largely given up trying to convince HN readers that tech work in the future will be the modern equivalent of bricklaying and will need its own protection for workers. Workers enjoy a high demand now and think that will always be the case but blacksmiths and telegraph operators thought so too.
Exactly. Crabs in the pot. "How dare you suggest lifting everyone up. Only I should be lifted up!" A lot of HN thinks they are Captains Of Industry who would somehow make less money in a union. The rest point to the least-pleasant union they can think of and declare "They are all necessarily like that one."
Unions have not helped their cause over here. They have regularly enforced paying bad people more than good people because the only measure they allow is years on the job. They regularly prevent people who want to move into management from doing so (not to be confused with people who don't want to!) be not allowing anything learned to count for your management role. They regularly discourage learning something more. They regularly yell that doing better work just helps your employer and will not help you.
Unions don't have to be that way, but all the examples I have of unions are places I would not want to work. Thus why would I want a union in my job?
> They have regularly enforced paying bad people more than good people because the only measure they allow is years on the job.
This is blatant propaganda. Stop repeating it, it's just false. There are plenty of unions where compensation has nothing to do with seniority, just look at SAG-AFTRA: Daniel Radcliffe was making a lot more than actor playing Mr. Dursely, despite the the latter having more acting experience than the former's experience living.
All you do by perpetuating lies about unions is making management more powerful. It doesn't benefit you at all. Yet here you are, going to bat for them.
It is not false. It is not true for all unions, but it is true for some.
Management is NOT your enemy. This is probably the worst lie unions keep repeating. The best solutions are win-win. Yes management has different interests, but that doesn't make them an enemy.
Fundamentally, why do we work? We work for money. The employees want to make as much money as possible, the employer wants to make as much as possible. Management, representing capital, can make more money by paying their employees less. Therein lies the fundamental, unsolvable conflict between labor and management.
By the company as a whole making more money, everyone can make more money. But no matter how much more money the company makes, capital and by extension management can make more money by paying the employees less.
There’s a value X that’s the absolute minimum you would work for, any less and you quit today.
There’s a value Y that’s the absolute maximum I would pay you, any penny more and I fire you immediately.
Y - X is up for grabs, and there are zero moral proscriptions I would give to any allocation of this between employee and employer. Each and every aspect of the employee-employer relationship is advantaged already in favor of the employer (resource disparity, implicit solidarity from company structure, regulations). Unions tend to reduce my share of Y-X. If I was a laborer, I’d prefer a union.
E: I’ve seen unions that are counter examples to each of your complaints so not really interesting to me to think too much about your own personal experience with unions.
Why is that incredible? I left a top level comment on why I hate unions [1], they create the worst set of incentives possible - they are exclusionary, anti-meritocratic, bureaucratic, anti-innovation... if I was to make a purely morality-based choice, without considering selfish consequences, I'd sooner join something less evil like a drug cartel.
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