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A good question worth considering, IMO. Take the Susan G. Komen Foundation as a present-day example of a foundation that, although founded with a righteous cause in mind, has (in some folks' estimation) lost its way, and/or become a somewhat negative force on cancer treatment, women's health, and charity efforts generally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Co...

Of course for a foundation that relies heavily on continuing donations, the "market" (so to speak, in this case arranged for the generation of social good) can send a corrective signal by cutting donations. For a completely self-sustaining trust, it stands to reason that society would have little chance to "fix" a wayward organization.


You've not refuted the article so much as pointed out a corner case the author didn't address in which ML is a good fit. Your example, using ML to perform the medical coding function, is using a data source (in this case the EMR) for one of the purposes for which it was explicitly designed and for which it is (arguably) non-deficient. That is a realm not doomed to failure.

The realm doomed to failure is using a data source for a completely oblique purpose for which it is horribly distorted. Namely, the purpose of optimizing individual and public health by discovering guidelines and treatments, diagnosing illness, and delivering optimal care.

(Of course medical billing as an enterprise shouldn't even exist, but that is another topic.)


Thanks for the nuance. I completely agree with how you've framed the situation.


A bit like Captain Renault proclaiming his shock at finding gambling in Rick's cafe.


Here are your winnings, sir.


If we go around breaking windows we could really bolster the world's window-making capacity.


I wish the first thread I saw was this enthusiastic about Brother. I've got an HP delivering today because it sounded like the Linux driver support was more solid -- didn't see a mention of this proprietary cartridges nonsense. Mea culpa for not doing more research I guess.


The latest Brother lasers also have proprietary cartridges, but the chip that does the DRM just slides out of a slot in the cartridge and so as long as you don't discard it you can keep reusing that chip in unofficial cartridges.

With IPP (AirPrint) built into CUPS now, my Brother actually works better (has a bigger range of print options) without their drivers installed.


I've found cheap Chinese replacement cartridges on Amazon for my Brother color laser that come with the chip. Not that it's hard to move the chip over, but the price was the same as ones without the chip. Hopefully firmware updates won't break these working.


The brother drivers are junk. However there is no reason to use them - the printers are completely standard and don't need drivers. Though in some cases it is some effort to figure out how to configure the printer.


You invented "Chutes and Ladders: Legacy".


Hilarious and genius. I’m going to pursue this angle with him.


If the hot startup trend suddenly became lean hospital systems, you'd see all sorts of articles about the ideal attending-to-resident physician ratio.


Worth noting that the author makes a significant claim without any citation:

> That vaping works as a way to quit smoking... seems clear.

Studies have been fairly limited so far, given the recency of e-cigarettes (relative to science's timescale). And the studies that we have seem pretty mixed: some showing benefit over other accepted smoking cessation methods, some not. Some showing higher relapse rates in the e-cigarette group. Nothing about that seems clear to me.


What they didn't report is the corresponding decrease in labor costs. If they save 1M in labor to lose 850K, they're still ahead.


> You know someone somewhere got a can of creamed corn.

But the point was you don't know that. If they get deluged with creamed corn, it might just sit in a warehouse, get shipped to a different community, or even get trashed. Donate a can if you prefer, just don't fool yourself with false guarantees.


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