By chance, don't you know why we cannot have electric wheelchair for everyone who needs it? Manual wheelchair seems to be not very convenient and to require lot of effort to use it.
Motorized wheelchairs are not a good fit for everyone. They are much bigger, heavier, harder to transport (you need a van), and even with a clutch to allow emergency non-motorized use, because of their design and weight, they can't be really used without a motor, so you're f*ked if the battery runs out.
They're good for some uses, for some folks, but are not a solution for all.
Newer battery tech is helping improve the “compactness” of motorized chairs. We have a “fold and go” (https://www.foldandgowheelchairs.com/) which can fit in a car trunk (though still want a full size sedan or bigger if you plan on putting anything else in there) and at 60lbs is only about 50% heavier than some of the heavy “standard” chairs out there. Still not something you’re going to move well on your own without an able bodied assistant or some specialized equipment, but compared to older motorized chairs it’s a huge improvement
As I understand, it doesn't even have a motor? Why cannot we have an electric wheelchair for everyone today? How do you climb uphill (or from an underground passage) without a motor?
Also, I don't know anything bout wheelchairs but googling shows that there are Chinese electric wheelchairs below $1000 (don't know anything about their quality).
Traditional power chairs are much bigger and heavier than lightweight manual chairs. They're a nightmare to transport unless you have a custom van with an elevator. They also can't handle curbs.
Ultralight manual chairs are often foldable, and light enough that you can transfer out of your chair into the driver's seat of a car, take the chair apart and put the pieces in the passenger's seat of a normal sedan. That level of independence is huge. Also, you can pop wheelies over curbs and other obstacles.
Finally, pushing yourself keeps you in shape, since you miss out on the baseline exercise from walking. Otherwise you decondition and get weak and fragile. Power chairs are for those who can't push themselves sustainably.
As many others have commented, every user's disability and body is unique. You're spending 16 hours a day in the chair. If it doesn't fit you, you'll get pressure sores or strain injuries. The cheap ones are for people who don't need to use them that much.
Power-assist chairs are pretty neat though, I knew a guy who basically DIYed one, I think from a kit, starting with a manual chair. He could wheel for miles on it and keep in shape.
Yeah, back when I needed a chair I used an ultralight with Yamaha power assist wheels. It was great - a little chonkier than a pure manual but I could go anywhere, plus I got to keep my VW Beetle instead of needing a $100k wheelchair van.
If it's a lightweight wheelchair custom to your body measurements (not a cheap amazon product) the going uphill is fairly easy. There are also attachments like the SmartDrive for steeper grades.
Unless you don't have function in your arms, it's best to avoid a fully electric wheelchair.
It would be better if the software could just scan the receipt. And if you live in the country with electronic receipts (like Russia) then you can get them to your email in electronic form or find online by identifiers on a paper receipt.
Regarding emojis: I believe they should be monochrome in console. The problem is that when you have text with emojis they stand out too much and distract you. So they should be monochrome, not so large and not so standing out.
Unless they mean a completely new style of emoji to complement the monochrome, then I'd say no. Flattening existing emojis to one color would probably be awful.
Sometimes... one of the biggest problems with TUIs is that every terminal emulator is extremely opinionated about how it wants to render anything that isn't trivial ASCII, even in 2024.
Sometimes you can select color emojis. Sometimes you can't turn OFF color emojis. Sometimes you can set font preferences to use something like FSD Emoji [1] where possible and fall back to other fonts, sometimes you can only set a single font.
Don't get me started on box drawing characters and, worse than any of the above, ligatures (which most open-source terminals have either a religious aversion to at the expense of their users, or refuse to implement any solution that doesn't meet the performance bar similar to non-ligatured font rendering, which functionally means we'll probably never see ligature support in those terminals).
My dream UI I think might be "every window is FLTK/FOX/other lightweight UI toolkit (maybe that one Rust tools like `amdtop` use?), strictly adheres to a system-wide theming protocol (a-la GTK2, most QTs, etc) that provides a highly consistent human interface, and provides Vim-style bindings and a `:command` bar and otherwise pretends to be a terminal window in all ways except the "actually being a monospace character grid" part. In other words: a GUI that pretends mice were never invented (or rather - makes them fully optional and interchangeable with the keyboard). But instead we have the stupid modern UI dichotomy of "keyboard fans have to fit their lives into a character grid, mice fans have to deal with shipping all of Chromium and not one single app on the system looking even remotely like any of the others, and keyboard support is unpredictable at best".
[1]: https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/fsd-emoji/ , note that it's woefully incomplete and honestly this ends up creating an even more jarring experience than just using color Noto/Twemoji everywhere.
What I don't like about Debian is that they have several names for releases which are difficult to remember (for example, a distribution can be called "Bookworm" and "stable" at the same time and later it is not "stable" anymore). It would be much easier if they just used numbers everywhere and added names in brackets.
Debian also has version numbers (11, 12, 13) but people prefer the names releases for some reason.
I don't mind the names too much, and I don't even mind the moving "stable" name, but I do get confused because Debian's names don't necessarily increment. Ubuntu made the smart decision to make their names alphabetical and that helps tremendously when you're trying to guess how recent a particular version is.
> Homeless people are unlikely to pay $20 000 per year which is the price of the drug though.
True, but think about all the people who are fully functioning and productive members of society and got afflicted with this disease. This med will increase the likelihood that they continue to be highly functioning and compliant with the treatment. This will allow them to keep their jobs and cognitive abilities.
Every person I know with this disease has trouble sticking to meds due to side effects, and not sticking to the meds and relapsing multiple times is probably one of the most important reasons that their condition regresses.
It’s not just the side effects that cause people with schizophrenia to be non-compliant with meds. Many people with schizophrenia stop taking meds because they do not think they are sick - anosognosia. It’s why a longer lasting injectable is often recommended over daily oral meds.
> longer lasting injectable is often recommended over daily oral meds
Both are recommended. Why? Daily meds are not only effective, but remind the patient that they have an illness that needs daily maintenance, it makes them involved in the treatment. Long acting injectables are added monthly to prevent backslides in case the patient forgets or does not want to take their medicine.
It would be nice if every one could afford it. And people were still filthy rich, but not necessarily exorbitantly rich? It cost the company discovering the drug around $11M
Yep the poor people will only have to wait 20 years or so for the patent to expire. I’m happy it will help people but I can still get angry at companies that will watch people die and suffer, give a shrug, and continue counting their billions.
How completely inhumane. From a strictly numerical perspective you are correct, but it is disgusting and vile.
I know plenty of people without mental health issues who can't get jobs that make 20k and I know a few with degrees who can't.
Making healthcare a for-profit venture guarantees that poor people suffer disproportionately. Making chemicals is cheap and most of the innovation happens on government grants and funding. A government run healthcare system is obvious a cheaper solution with less suffering.
The idea is for the government to spend that $20k/year somehow (and hopefully get a big discount by buying in bulk). Spending that much on countless homeless people, and turning a large fraction of them into productive citizens, isn't "vile" at all: it would make the homeless people much happier for one thing, but would also save the rest of society a lot of money by not having to deal with the negative effects of their homelessness, plus increase the GDP and thus the tax base, easily paying for itself.
I don't think that's what they were advocating, the way I read it they were saying that people should spend that money on themselves and neglected the idea of people who couldn't afford it. But yeah if the idea is for the government to lift people out of poverty that's great we just haven't seen much of that in this country, or at least not as much as I think we could practically afford.
I wasn't really advocating anything, just pointing out that the math works.
Who might pay the $20k of course varies a lot, depending on the health care system.
One thing I've learned over the years is to not try "reading between the lines" to suss out what people are "really saying". It's just too error prone, and you rarely end up communicating.
Fact is, government run public health does look at numbers at the end of the day. A medicine that increases "value" (however you define that) more than it costs is more likely to get gov funding.
Turning away from the elephant in the room because it is "vile" doesn't help anyone and just entrenches the status quo.
You're looking at this in a very American Centric way, a lot of other countries figure out how medicines for very low costs. When that happens the numbers change a lot.
> Making healthcare a for-profit venture guarantees that poor people suffer disproportionately.
This is true of literally every industry; the poor always get less than the rich.
Why not nationalize everything so that the poor always get the same as the rich? Surely if the government can run healthcare it can run toy shops and grocery stores.
Correct, this does happen in every industry. But industries are not created equal. Some are really important, and some are just kind of there.
A kid not getting a toy is sad, but it's not the end of the world. However, healthcare is literally life or death. It makes complete sense to single out healthcare.
This doesn't align with real-world statistics. Public options like the UK's NHS provide a higher quality of care, for a lower cost, and they're quicker in emergencies.
This isn't just the NHS, however. Virtually every developed nation's public option, because pretty much all but the US have them, outpaces the US in virtually any metric you can choose.
Not only do we pay much, much more, but we also get lower quality care. We also get slower care. We also get more extreme care.
The core issue with the private sector is they have absolutely zero incentive to provide good care. If they're smart, they should provide suboptimal care and unnecessary care - that way they can get more money in the long run.
The "free market" is not the magic bandaid to fix everything on planet Earth. You HAVE to think about incentives. What will the free market actually do here? Even a cursory, naive analysis will show the free market should promote sickness because sick people don't have options. This doesn't delve into insurance, which quite literally has an incentive to not give out treatment.
Even those countries, it is still a for profit verture. Companies are paid for products, Doctors and healthcare professionals are paid to go to work.
These other countries didn't nationalize their industries. They simply use spending controls. The government says we "will pay $X and you can take it or leave it". The US is rather rare in that we say "We will take it no matter the cost".
Companies are more or less greedy in different countries. They are the same companies!
There can be specific individuals or organizations that seek no profit, but they are almost always working with and through other for profit entities.
To say something like an entire industry should be nonprofit is pie in the sky, which is what I am trying to highlight.
Overly broad moral sentiments like people should not seek profit when it comes to healthcare quickly break down when examined in any detail.
I think What people usually mean is simply that they think health insurance should be funded by taxes and accessible to all. Instead of simply saying this, they end up justifying it with overly broad and poorly thought out moral laws.
I agree that price feels shockingly high. However, the government can subsidize treatment. As can private insurance policies, before the sufferer becomes homeless, or if they qualify for a family member's plan.
The population suffering these illnesses are already costing the public a lot of money in various forms, it could be worth the investment.
Drugs become generic eventually and costs come down.
Zyprexa, which was mentioned in the article, is almost always prescribed as generic Olanzapine. Cost as of 2024 for generic - 9 USD, brand name 476 USD.
a necessary evil in a capitalist system. Is capitalism perfect? No. Do we know of a better system yet? Maybe. But as of right now better to have a possible cure for 20k rather then nothing.
Also in screenshots from underground hacker forums in the news the users who leak databases or hack something often have anime-styled kind-looking avatar which creates a contrast with post content.
That Chinese RPG game is not anime-based, but definitely anime-styled (probably to appeal to audience of anime viewers or maybe just because anime-styled characters look better than realistic ones).
- in recent year or two, saw lot of people in the streets wearing clothes with Japanese words. Saw such clothes in stores. I thought initially that they were fans of Japanese culture, but it seems that it is just a fashion trend and they probably cannot even read them.
- when entering a bookstore or a school supplies store, there are notebooks and sketchbooks and other goods with anime-style characters, translations of novels. Novels are now even in some supermarkets. Again, it started recently.
- that anime-styled Chinese RPG game is somewhat popular among young people, and when reading laptop reviews there are comments like "Will (anime-styled Chinese game) run on this?"
- I am not sure if we can count anime-styled avatars on social media because I don't remember if they were always widespread or only recently
Hope these trends will continue. I wonder is it our local (Russian) trend or something global?
On a related topic, there was a recent lawsuit from IBM against Zynga over some obvious patents (like showing ads along with content), but it seems that the news didn't appear on HN somehow?
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