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Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

RobotCar project from Oxford University hopes to retrofit cars to make them autonomous. This post originally appeared on IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog. At this point, seeing robot cars pop up at places like CES is getting less and less surprising and more and more frustrating as we think about just how many hurdles these vehicles have to drive over before we'll actually get to start using them. Don't get me wrong, there's been substantial progress, but when researchers say things like "hey we can make a car autonomous for $150"—as U.K. researchers said about their recently unveiled RobotCar project —it's time to get excited (and frustrated) all over again. This car, a modified Nissan Leaf, comes from Oxford University. The first thing to know about it is that it doesn't use GPS. With a system like this, you've got two different things going on at the same time. Static information consists of semantic information like the location and type of road markings and traffic signs, traffic lights, lane information, where curbs are, etc. Now, about this $150 price ...

Actually, Mr. Brill, Fixing Healthcare IS Kinda Simple Thank you, Matt Yglesias, for cutting to the core of Stephen Brill’s huge Time magazine story on the profiteering orgy we call the U.S. healthcare system: The framing device, which is clever-but-wrong, says we spend too much time debating who should pay for U.S. health care and not enough time debating why the prices are so high. The analytic core of the article shows that when it comes to hospital prices, who pays determines how high the price is. When an individual patient comes through the door of a hospital for treatment, he or she is subjected to wild price gouging. Insane markups are posted on everything from acetaminophen to advanced cancer drugs to blankets to routine procedures. Yglesias has it right. Brill has more such stories, which are ripping perfectly responsible lives to pieces as we speak. But well, OK, this guy had cancer. Let’s experiment. Actually we don’t need to toss her in, because she fell in last year. Here’s what happened. Thus I entered … what, a market? Cited:

ChooseYourOwnApplication The relentless Page Refresh has been delivering its blinding white flash to your users and consuming valuable bandwidth for years. Does your team have the Backbone to Knockout the Page Refresh? You can engage the hubs of SignalR, broadcast with Socket.io, or maybe even Pusher. In this session, you will embark on a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style project where you will make decisions as you develop a Single-Page Application (SPA). Discuss Choose Your Own Application: Google Group or @CYOApp Paul Harvey | WHEN THE ABUSER GOES TO WORK ... Note: For a related story, see Bullying Causes Coworker Stress. Pat Bosses who bully their subordinates also damage co-workers who see or hear about the abuse, much like second-hand smoke affects those in the vicinity of a smoker. That is the conclusion of a study published recently in The Journal of Social Psychology, “An Investigation of Abusive Supervision, Vicarious Abuse Supervision, and Their Joint Impacts.” The study was conducted by Paul Harvey from the University of New Hampshire, Kenneth Harris and Raina Harris from Indiana University Southeast and Melissa Cast from New Mexico State University.” The study defines abusive supervision as a dysfunctional type of leadership that includes a sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors toward subordinates. “Although the effects of abusive supervision may not be physically harmful as other types of dysfunctional behavior (workplace violence or aggression), the actions are likely to leave longer lasting wounds.

Letters: A banker's millions won't save a life | Business I am an ambulance medic and part of a two-man crew. We often get up at 4am, check over a 999 frontline ambulance, then drive anything up to two hours to our area of cover, all in our own time. Then follows a 12-hour intensive shift, where we deal with anything from multiple car pile-ups to seriously ill children. We are sometimes abused both verbally and physically. Sometimes we are threatened with sharp implements and have to negotiate or even physically fight for our safety. Half-hour rest breaks are not always taken due to the demand on services. I would like to say to Sir Philip Hampton of RBS that our wages are "modest" for what we do (RBS chief underpaid, says chairman, 12 February). Would they consider our wages modest as they apply this term to their own?

Work becomes more like prison This article originally appeared on AlterNet. The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity! The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. “The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. “Sometimes, management would call staff to an office and tell them they had to do better if their scores were low.” “I had really easy assignments and when I’d come back after a break, I would get a horrendous score and wonder why,” he said. But working people close to death has some downsides for companies.

untitled I am an ambulance medic and part of a two-man crew. We often get up at 4am, check over a 999 frontline ambulance, then drive anything up to two hours to our area of cover, all in our own time. Then follows a 12-hour intensive shift, where we deal with anything from multiple car pile-ups to seriously ill children. We are sometimes abused both verbally and physically. Sometimes we are threatened with sharp implements and have to negotiate or even physically fight for our safety. Half-hour rest breaks are not always taken due to the demand on services. I would like to say to Sir Philip Hampton of RBS that our wages are "modest" for what we do (RBS chief underpaid, says chairman, 12 February). Would they consider our wages modest as they apply this term to their own?

No, I'm not going to download your bullshit app How we used to read the news, back in the era of the Web: Go to newspaper website. Click on story. Read. How we read news in the era of fucking stupid pointless iPhone apps. Go to website. In the “web vs. apps” war, I think you can infer which side I’m on. Maintenant disponsible en version française

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