Hacker News: luddaite

New comment by luddaite in "Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?"

luddaite — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 19:03:47 +0000

Testing should be reserved for situations where the outcome of the test will change management. One such situation is whether or not the patient should be quarantined. Another situation is whether or not medical management will be affected (send home vs admit vs ICU). If someone is going to self quarantine regardless, maybe testing isn't appropriate.

New comment by luddaite in "FDA clears ‘world’s first’ portable, low-cost MRI"

luddaite — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 01:23:16 +0000

Will ER rooms need to be re-designed to accommodate bedside MRI? The ER at the hospital I work at already has special rooms for Gyn and Ophtho complaints so it wouldn't be that far fetched for there to be a room designed for Stroke code patients.

New comment by luddaite in "The Great American Eye Exam Scam"

luddaite — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 21:53:19 +0000

I think the recommendation from USPSTF is every 3 years. If a provider is forcing yearly examinations on you without a good reason (i.e. suspicious findings on the path report) then I would consider talking to your provider or finding a new one.

edit: Here is a link to the recommendation https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/...

New comment by luddaite in "This is the best drone according to Amazon? – The HS100"

luddaite — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 14:24:00 +0000

Isn't this approach that merchants such as Massdrop are taking? They have a small number of product categories that are heavily curated by the staff and the users.

New comment by luddaite in "Brave files adtech complaint against Google"

luddaite — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 18:41:38 +0000

I would be all over any search engine subscription that guaranteed that none of my information would ever be stored in any way. Just give me the option to pay!

New comment by luddaite in "Stop treating tech jerks like gods"

luddaite — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 18:58:27 +0000

I remember reading that SpaceX employees work crazy long hours and that the burnout rate is high. Is the same true for the people who work the venues or go on the road with bands?

New comment by luddaite in "Hard Lessons Breathe New Life Into Retail Stores"

luddaite — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 23:49:50 +0000

I ordered new electric toothbrush heads from Amazon about a year ago and ended up receiving a very obvious knockoff product. It might be my fault for not reading the listing carefully but this definitely would not have happened in a brick and mortar where I can pick up the product and see that it isn't some off-brand mimic.

New comment by luddaite in "Stop treating tech jerks like gods"

luddaite — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 23:47:18 +0000

Aren't tech leaders such as Musk and Jobs different from rock stars though? Both groups might exhibit poor personal behavior but only tech leaders have the ability to make thousands of employees work in miserable conditions. I agree that the article kind of misses the point when it discusses the private lives of these figures but there is definitely something to the idea that people who treat their employees like shit shouldn't be worshipped.

New comment by luddaite in "Hard Lessons Breathe New Life Into Retail Stores"

luddaite — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 22:31:19 +0000

I've recently started doing the opposite. I'll search Amazon to see what products are recommended and see if I can find those (or something similar) in local stores. This is particularly true when I am buying something that I don't know much about. I basically use Amazon as initial research to discover what properties I should be looking for in an item.

New comment by luddaite in "After 24 years, Doom II's final secret has been found"

luddaite — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 18:04:38 +0000

On the flipside, I really appreciate a short but sweet single player campaign. Titanfall 2 had some truly awesome levels (time travel!) and ended when it had said what it wanted to say. I really dislike games that feel drawn out like too little butter on too much toast (some JRPGs come to mind..).

New comment by luddaite in "Why startups are leaving Silicon Valley"

luddaite — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:26:50 +0000

If we assume that the premise here is correct (there is some amount of exodus of technical talent from SV), isn't it still a good thing? My impression is that the result of having all the major tech companies located in one region is the development of a tech cultural bubble. The current tech industry has a hard time understanding and relating to the rest of the country/world. Wouldn't we all be better off if they spread out a bit such that they could better represent the entirety of the world?

New comment by luddaite in "The Bitter Regrets of a Useless Chinese Daughter"

luddaite — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 14:42:33 +0000

I am just entering the job market and I would like to try and make this my career as well. I'd like to go from early stage company to early stage company and help the founders build something cool. Any tips or advice?

New comment by luddaite in "Amazon's electricity rate discounts have pushed up utility costs"

luddaite — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 17:44:04 +0000

Certainly the lack of jobs is partially due to all the businesses that Amazon puts out of business by leveraging all of their AWS money to out compete companies in unrelated markets?

New comment by luddaite in "Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU?"

luddaite — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 17:36:07 +0000

The company I work at manufactures these instruments. There are a bunch of videos on Youtube explaining how these systems work if you search for "flow sorting". I can also answer questions if you have them.

New comment by luddaite in "Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU?"

luddaite — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 15:50:30 +0000

> Aren't FPGA's used mostly to test/design a circuit that you would then go on to actually fabricate/build?

We use FPGAs in cell sorting because we need to make decisions off of high dimensional data with low latency. The cells moving through our system have velocities higher than 1 m/s. They flow past a set of lasers and wind up in a droplet less than a millisecond later so we need to make a decision whether or not to sort a droplet within that time frame. We don't use ASICs because we don't move enough volume to justify the startup cost.

New comment by luddaite in "Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic"

luddaite — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 00:03:30 +0000

We don't know the full story and likely never will. What if the doctors were correct in their assessment that the patient was unfit to make medical decisions and that she was being coerced by parents to act against her own best interest? I would be interested in looking at her medical record to try and understand what was really going on but that is unlikely to ever happen. There is really bad information asymmetry here because the hospital is legally prohibited from releasing any medical information but the patient can choose to reveal as much or as little as they wish.

New comment by luddaite in "Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic"

luddaite — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 00:00:43 +0000

I agree that the monetary incentives are definitely incorrectly aligned in the current healthcare system as is. That said, I don't think that monetary incentives are the only incentives present here. Most physicians don't go into medicine only to make money. There are easier ways to make more money. From my experience, most healthcare providers genuinely care about the patients' well being. That is why I bristle whenever people rush to attribute a physician's actions to greed. I totally agree with you that a better incentive structure would improve the system.

New comment by luddaite in "Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic"

luddaite — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 23:56:29 +0000

Ethics councils are often hybrid in nature, including members of the local community that do not stand to benefit financially from patient care. I agree that informing patients about the presence of these governing bodies is a difficult problem. However, many bad situations would be avoided if the information was disseminated as standard procedure at the earliest possible convenience (before disagreement has a chance to arise).

New comment by luddaite in "Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic"

luddaite — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 23:42:29 +0000

I have definitely seen anecdotal stories of this occurring. Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that this type of behavior is widespread?

New comment by luddaite in "Parents Break Teen Out of Mayo Clinic"

luddaite — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 23:02:22 +0000

It's easy to attribute this whole situation to greed and/or malice but I think that fails Hanlon's razor. I can easily see this whole situation occurring because of poor communication and the culture of paternalism in medicine. It is not hard to imagine a team of healthcare providers that know or think they know what is good for their patient and do a poor job explaining why they are making the decisions that they are making whether that is because of poor communication skills or because they are simply too busy. I think the article proposes a good solution in calling up the hospital's ethics council. This should be standard operating procedure when a patient disagrees with medical staff and the presence of this resource should be communicated to the patient early on and by a employee who isn't directly involved with the patient's care.