I agree. I think both system have significant flaws, and that is coming from someone for whom the US healthcare system benefits the most (great health insurance, mid-30s, healthy, well-off, very capable of navigating complicated paperwork, and access to some of the best hospitals). I can’t imagine being a lower income, lower educated, aging person with chronic health problems, in a rural flyover state with limited community hospitals. Night and day difference.

On the other hand, some 20% of the total population of Nova Scotia is currently active on the waiting list to get a PCP. You don’t like your PCP? Too bad. You want to get a second opinion? Too bad. Your PCP retires/moves/closes their practice? Too bad. They have tried to plug the gap with allowing pharmacists to prescribe certain meds, and expanding PA/NPs. This is probably better than the alternative of no doctors, but its probably a net negative on the system as a whole compared to properly staffing with physicians.

Overall, it seems like chronic underfunding, and underpay for doctors has led to situation in Nova Scotia in which preventative care, or really, care for anything non-life threatening, has deteriorated quite meaningfully.

Also a Canadian living in the US, and I would tend to disagree. In major US cities, with good health insurance, there are plenty of PCPs, and availability of specialists.

For instance, I had a ganglion cyst that I went to see my PCP for. We decided to give it a couple weeks to see if it would go away by itself. It didn’t, so I messaged him, and was scheduled to see an orthopedic surgeon (probably overkill) within 3 days to have it looked at and drained. Total cost: $0 for PCP; $40 co-pay for the specialist.

Meanwhile, my father in Nova Scotia waited close to a year for a knee replacement surgeon consult and is now waiting for surgery slot, which is expected to be another 6-9 months, despite being in significant pain. That just would not happen in the US.

There are many problems for sure, and I don’t have a universal measure for efficiency, but anecdotally, in my experience, there is just way less waiting in many parts of the US. I also acknowledge how privileged I am to have good insurance, resources to not worry about large out of pocket maxes in an emergency, and to live in a city with some of the best hospital networks in the country.

I’d wager that owning an iPhone is cheaper than a Samsung Galaxy or likely any premium Android.

An iPhone is typically getting 6 years of iOS versions, plus an additional 1-2 years of security updates. For instance, the iPhone X, announced in Fall 2017 was on latest iOS until iOS 17 comes in this month. iPhone 6S, released in Sep 2015, is still getting security updates.

If you are someone who runs their phone into the ground until the end of security updates, iPhone wins hands down. If you are someone who wants the latest and greatest, iPhone hold resale value like no other and its not even close.

Obsidian is also in the “built with Electron, and doesn’t make me want to scream” bucket for me.

I would argue that VSCode is the big exception.

Directional location is pretty innovative.

I suspect device coverage, relative to tile, even in countries not dominated by Apple, composes of a couple orders of magnitude more devices.

Great question. I’m trying to change my narcissistic tendencies that sneak into many aspects of my life and relationships. I struggle seeing things from other people’s perspectives, get extremely defensive if feel challenged and often empathy doesn’t come as natural to me as I would like.

You should do this anyway - it funds great original educational content, and is quite good value.

Okay. Trying picking up a iPhone X (releases Sep 2017) vs iPhone 14 Pro and see the difference. There are a lot of quality of life improvements that make a noticeable difference in user experience.

• 120hz
• better battery life
• 2x as fast charge
• much brighter screen, always on if that interests you
• triple camera sensors, with wide lens vs double, no wide lens
• LiDAR to improve portrait photos
• faster Face ID (used 100s of times a day)
• satellite communication for emergencies
• MagSafe charging/docking ability
• 5G (really only find it useful for hotspots)

I can confidently say everyone of these features has improved my user experience. None of them by their self are earth shattering, but taken as a whole, the constant iterative improvements have amounted to quite a lot.

Agreed, but that is not what OP said.

Not sure I agree that phone tech has peaked a couple years ago for the average user. What technology peaked years ago?

Camera? Efficient processors? Display panels? Biometrics? Batteries? Cellular/Wi-Fi modems? Emergency satellite connectivity? I cannot think of a single technology (I am on iPhone 14 Pro) that is not at least marginally better than a year or two ago, and pretty meaningful improvement from ~5 years ago.

The rate of technological improvement has slowed or plateaued, but there is a pretty reasonable argument that current flagship technologies are the “peak”, even for average user, if only incrementally. I agree that this plateau, coupled with upgrade cost, is making it a harder choice to decide to upgrade for average user.

Thank you for this!

I dislike Musk as much as the next person, but most of the hate of Musk & Twitter/X fails to make the distinction that they are not the same thing. At this point, any additional capital injected into X is throwing good money after really bad money.

Another suggestion would be to not include the number of blocks in the label. That doesn’t make sense. If you want an absolute number to be included, but the weight (scaled to millions of tons appropriately). It is less abstract than number of blocks.

Also, this is more subjective, but the font makes it look very amateur in my opinion.

Interesting data, but I don’t think it is beautifully presented. Bar charts, or maybe a blown up pie charts may be easier to grasp the scale.

Blobs of the largely same color, dispersed in a random pattern make it hard to quickly see scale

I dig it.

Technology?

I wonder why abysmal has a second hump around 5? Could it be that survey readers do not understand it?