kvb

15 ms·

181.
by kvb 13y ago
And here's an understandable presentation treating the economics a little more formally: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/05/bun...
182.
by kvb 13y ago
That's certainly an important difference in general, but I don't see how it's relevant to this article. Here, the issue is not that people are priced out, it's that important, cheap drugs are underproduced.
183.
by kvb 13y ago
The Washingtonian article is very sad, but I'm not sure I buy Tabarrok's take on it. He once again harps on GMP regulations, but doesn't Europe have similar regulations? And the very first page of the Washingtonian article
184.
by kvb 13y ago
Loss leading may actually be harmful to consumers. See http://afinetheorem.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/loss-leading-as... for one readable explanation.
185.
by kvb 13y ago
You don't think having by far the biggest and best research organization is a competitive advantage?
186.
by kvb 13y ago
It would change a lot if it were true. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft plans to build the expertise necessary to abandon Intel, though. And though they're making inroads into building their own hardware, I don't think t
187.
by kvb 13y ago
On the contrary, it's exactly that sort of characterization that I object to. How could complying with court orders be the "worst possible privacy violation"? I'm sympathetic to the argument that the orders are overbro
188.
by kvb 13y ago
I can see how "but maybe that's just me" (and the entirety of the first paragraph) could be read as snarky, but that's not how I meant it. It was a non-rhetorical question: what should a company like Microsoft do when f
189.
by kvb 13y ago
Well, did you expect "privacy" to imply that your data would not be released to the government following legal requests for it? I always assumed it meant that they wouldn't share it with other businesses, but maybe that&#x27
190.
by kvb 13y ago
The problem with this is that it enables weak-willed managers to claim that everyone on their team is great, serving as a kind of grade inflation that makes true high-performers seem less impressive. As I understand it, the curve is only e
191.
by kvb 13y ago
How do you ensure that performance is rewarded fairly and consistently across an organization with tens of thousands of engineers? I'm not wild about the concept of stack ranking but I don't see any alternatives that don't h
192.
by kvb 13y ago
See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management . Basically there's a solid line to your primary manager but a dotted line for secondary relationships.
193.
by kvb 13y ago
This seems simplistic to me. Doesn't Valve, your favorite poster boy for open allocation, also stack rank? There seem to be several sub-organizations at Microsoft that are harmonious, at least to an outsider's view (e.g. Azure s
194.
by kvb 13y ago
If you want to understand Microsoft, you could do a lot worse than reading http://hal2020.com/ , by a former General Manager at Microsoft. I learn something from pretty much every blog post he writes. For instance, in his m
195.
by kvb 13y ago
What makes this article from May 2012 particularly relevant today? Also, the title of this HN post conveniently drops an important part of the articles actual title ("for all the wrong reasons").
196.
by kvb 13y ago
Journals are typically interested in publishing novel results. Why would it be a problem if studies which find that a drug works as expected are not published, as long as they are still submitted to the FDA and assessed there?
197.
by kvb 13y ago
Not that it's a popular language, but a type-provider-like feature was recently added to the dependently-typed language Idris (see https://github.com/edwinb/Idris-dev/commit/46964d7d57c18826d... ).
198.
by kvb 13y ago
I'm sure there are several, though I don't know if there's a comprehensive list. For instance, DPI scaling can now be set per-monitor.
199.
by kvb 13y ago
Tightly integrated products have many benefits to consumers. Bing isn't being integrated (solely) to "inflate" its market share, it's being integrated to improve the Windows user's experience. Google doesn't
200.
by kvb 13y ago
The genes for penicillin resistance predate the use of penicillin as an antibiotic. Perhaps there are genes which confer silver resistance which will be increasingly expressed as silver is used as a treatment.
201.
by kvb 13y ago
Well, one of the things that hurts Scala on the JVM is the lack of tail call elimination, which the CLR supports. Reified generics and value types are probably also significant improvements.
202.
by kvb 13y ago
While there's plenty to disagree with, it pains me to see such rich fodder for an interesting discussion on the design, implementation, and adoption of programming languages languish on the second page of HN while the first page still
203.
by kvb 13y ago
Hundreds of languages? I don't know, Xamarin's tools seem to indicate that there's a real demand for using C# on a variety of platforms. While not my personal preference, C# is really a wonderfully well-designed language.
204.
by kvb 13y ago
Did he participate in insider trading? Do you believe he was framed?
205.
by kvb 13y ago
Office has changed dramatically since then. The ribbon, while a superficial change, apparently has a huge impact on discoverability of Office features and usage. There's now an online version of the applications, and integration with
206.
by kvb 13y ago
No, that's not remotely plausible even if Myriad had won. They had patented isolated DNA. Biological processes such as human reproduction were always free and clear. Furthermore, your characterization of Monsanto's patents do
207.
by kvb 13y ago
They're compelled to lie, or they're compelled not to answer?
208.
by kvb 13y ago
What lies have companies told?
209.
by kvb 13y ago
How many should have been rejected, given proper scrutiny?
210.
by kvb 13y ago
And it's not like private sector jobs are necessarily much less repugnant... There are plenty of stories about Silicon Valley excesses, creepy big data projects, etc.

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