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They are finally reaching the point of rolling out their new clients that get off Visual Basic, so that’s something.

M, however, ends up being a combined database/business logic platform (and it’s fairly speedy at that, if that’s what you want). Extracting data into a nice tidy relational database does take time and development effort, though, but they have a reasonably robust process for this already.

This article seems to be a relatively mundane announcement to me. You could already do this same stuff with Epic on Azure, but I guess more options are nice.


I don’t think Epic’s install costs are secret or a “gotcha”. Any administrator interested in Epic can look at 20 years of installs and see that an Epic implementation is routinely a multi year, $100 million+ project for large organizations.

I’m also not sure what these “Epic Engineers” you’re referring to are, but I know that IT staffing is a conversation that happens early on in the sales process and it is not a surprise to anyone who’s looked around at existing Epic sites.

Whatever Epic’s flaws may be, I don’t think “public boondoggle” is a fair portrayal of how they do business.


Some college guys I know rode 200 miles around essentially a big roundabout (the loop length was probably less than 300 meters) at 20mph. When asked why they did it, they basically just shrugged and said they thought it would be a cool challenge. And I guess it was.


I wish the author the best on their reading journey! I feel like this article shares a valuable experience, and I would encourage anyone who's on the fence or who views literature as a waste of time to give it an earnest try.

Jumping straight into the classics can be hard due to the differences in language, cultural assumptions, and even just the fact that some of them are over-hyped, and it's tough to enjoy a book on its own terms when it's presented as "one of the best books ever."

Find some recommendations on the internet, go to the library, and check out a couple. If they don't strike your fancy, don't worry about it, and move on to the next recommendation until you find something you connect with and you want to keep reading.


I'd recommend Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang [0]. It's often billed as "speculative fiction", and I'd describe it as a series of short stories that define worlds slightly-to-extremely dissimilar to ours, and explores what that means to the people who live in them. I recall the stories being fun because there's some amount of guessing what will come next in the worldbuilding, and imagining what makes sense within the rules he's establishing, but he also drenches the stories in humanity, and many of them are quite emotional.

If you're trying to get him to read a classic specifically, maybe it would help to start with some non-fiction pieces. David Foster Wallace has an essay on what makes Dostoevsky great and worth reading [1]. And there are plenty of other essays and books out there on "why read the classics." If you think presenting your case through the lens of scientific rigor would be helpful, there are numerous studies showing that reading fiction increases empathy with others [2] (and if that's not appealing to him, you're probably in for a very long and uphill battle). For a classic recommendation, I think that similar to the article, Crime and Punishment is a good choice. It's pretty approachable language-wise, it's not crazy long, and it hits all those points of universal themes, some humor, and a deep empathy from the author to his main character.

---

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L...

[1] https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/04/feodors-guide-joseph...

[2] https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-reading-fiction-in...


I thought you said “define words slightly-to-extremely-dissimilar to ours.”

That sounded interesting. But it was “worlds”, not “words.”


I think the parent's comment was saying to find reviewers whose tastes align with your own, then trust their reviews for new content. This requires 1) that the media they publish through prints the name of the author; 2) when you read a review, you pay attention to who is writing it; and 3) a period of time to establish a relationship with a reviewer and build a sense of how much your tastes align.

I find the easiest way to do that is to generally read reviews, and when you go see the thing/buy the thing that got reviewed, think back to which reviewers closest aligned to your reaction, then read more of them, and eventually you'll find a small group of reviewers who you trust.

I admit that I haven't found "my" TV reviewer yet, since it seems the world of TV critics is afraid to offer any significant criticism of the shows they're reviewing. I'm not sure if that's an industry thing or if I've just been looking in the wrong places.


He’s said that he thinks his method of typing works fine and doesn’t lead to repetitive stress injuries, so he prefers it. I don’t remember which specific videos he said that in off the top of my head, though.


Econtalk had a recent episode [0] that discusses this problem and the limitations when applied to real life. There's also a transcript [1] for those who prefer reading.

I found the discussion (and the entire episode) to be a nice reflection on how applying rules/logic/algorithms to big, deeply human problems doesn't always work. While the secretary problem is a fascinating and unintuitive mathematical result, as many other commenters have pointed out, it just doesn't have that many strict uses in people's real lives, outside of the general idea of "try a few of X to get the idea of the field, then pick one".

[0] https://www.econtalk.org/russ-roberts-and-mike-munger-on-wil...

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/russ-roberts-and-mike-munger-on-wil...


I'll sheepishly admit I'm so low on time that I can't listen to Econtalk as much as I'd like these days.

Knowing Munger, I'll assume they talked about the heuristic's application in automated systems and it's prefect application there?

Also, dear HN reader, if you don't listen to EconTalk already, you're missing out on one the best podcasts out there.


This was a great episode, I came here to post it but you beat me. Have ordered the book which is published a bit later in the UK but I'm looking forward to reading.


I don’t think that’s the obvious takeaway. The specific chord voicings are complicated, sure, but the complexity he’s talking about are the key changes and unexpected tonal choices. You can’t remove those without fundamentally changing the feeling of the song.

When I was learning the guitar, I frequently would skip passing chords and simplify voicings I didn’t know how to play. As a result, my covers were pretty boring and lacking the impact of the originals. That’s fine for beginners, but a pro musician is going to take pride in either faithfully recreating a cover or intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it, not just skipping over stuff that’s hard.


>or intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it, not just skipping over stuff that’s hard.

Rick Beato interviews (acoustic guitarist) Tommy Emmanuel - https://youtu.be/PLIZZ9lIlwg


How complex is a song that can be played on entirely different instruments without re-interpretation?

When I think of complexity I think of unreconcilable elements that force the transposer to make tough decisions ("intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it").


I don’t really understand that idea of complexity, but Rick Beato is addressing this song from a music theory perspective, and I think this song would meet anyone’s definition of complex when it comes to theory.


There's no one 'music theory perspective'. Why not analyze it on more axes?

- Rhythmic patterns and variation

- Interplay between instruments

- Instrumentation and arrangement

- Structure

- Vocal style

- Lyrics

- Recording and mixing

By these metrics (and the ears of 99% of its listeners) it's a more or less generic 80s adult contemporary song. Yes it has a weird chord progression. Would it be more complex if it couldn't be boiled down to a series of chords?


By these metrics (and the ears of 99% of its listeners) it's a more or less generic 80s adult contemporary song.

That’s what the word “pop” is being used for in “the most complex pop song ever”. Rick Beato is giving an example of a literally popular song, one that somebody suggested they perform an impromptu concert because it was in the charts at the time, and which sounds totally mainstream, and yet has a very unusual chord progression.

And I think “music theory” in this context is basically jazz theory, where a song is boiled down to what you’d see in the Real Book - melody line, chords, and a description of the tempo and groove. Unless you’re doing big band, instrumentation is one of the standard small combos, or just whatever musicians you have to hand. Which again is reasonable in the context of “here’s a song we tried to busk in a scratch group, and it turned out to be crazily complicated”.

He’s not claiming it’s Schoenberg or anything!


I agree it's a good anecdote. It clearly still resonates with professional instrumentalists. But popular music has progressed so much since then that 'jazz theory' is unequip to grasp the complexities of modern recorded music. Beato in the video says modern pop music is getting simpler, but he's just using the wrong tools.


I guess he really means "less complex harmonically". You're definitely right that a lot of modern music has features that would be unimaginable or impossible to achieve 40 years ago when this song was written, both through new tech and stylistic innovations. But I think his view is still very defensible if you focus on pop songs, singable vocal-led pieces that you might attempt in karaoke.

There was a long period where jazz influences were very big in popular music -- jazz itself was actually popular! -- so there were a lot of very harmonically interesting pop songs. I agree with him that that seems generally less true nowadays (thinking of big mainstream singer-songwriters like Adele and Ed Sheeran). But I'd be interested to hear of good counterexamples.


I’m curious for more details on what your templating system was and how it worked. If you’re up for sharing, I’d love to hear about it.

I know the aforementioned EMR puts a lot of emphasis on their After Visit Summaries, which sounds somewhat similar to what you describe.


Feel free to email me. I'm dealing with a death close to me and some estate related issues so I may take some time to get back to you but I will.

For what it is worth, we never saw ourselves as a replacement for the After Visit Summaries but rather an adjunct that ensured said Summaries could be understood and utilized by non-speakers or ESL patients who perhaps are not as confident in their skills.


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