skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Linear algebra is the foundation of modern engineering. Before computers, the only mathematically tractable problems were those that could be reduced to linear problems. With computers, we can take on those formerly intractable problems by reducing them to massive systems of linear equations. Literally everything around you in daily life is the product of linear algebra.
Great idea! But you need at a minimum to add one more question: desired deductible.

I ended up with 79 plans and that is a bit much to sort through. Perhaps you could have a slider on the results that let you manually set the minimum deductible.

Also I assume the charge listed was monthly but you didn't state that.
They don't need to buy an operating system, because operating systems and native applications are becoming obsolete.

Everything is going web, whether people like it or not. Apple's success with IOS has tricked a lot of other companies, like Microsoft and RIM, into believing they need to compete directly on. I think Samsung is a lot smarter than people think. Really all they need is a phone with a good web browser because the underlying system is becoming only a support system to access the web.
How can a simple desktop environment selection control (you click, a list pops up, you select one item, it closes down) be flaky?
I hope you're right. I've been wrong many times in the past (who would ever want an iPad?), so don't let my pessimism get you down. Keep us posted on your progress.
I've read and would recommend Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler. http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Right-Sheldon-Axler/dp/...

For numerical aspects of linear algebra (and other subjects), I've found Numerical Recipes to be quite helpful.
Any resource should be fine, it depends on what kind you prefer. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33264/book-recommendation...

I like "A Gentle Introduction to Haskell," which is not gentle at all.
In fact it seems that it's impossible to install by clicking on the link

"One moment, please, while the current Silverlight installation status is determined...
Microsoft Silverlight may not be supported on your computer's hardware or operating system."
This is great stuff for adapting to different screen sizes, but it's hard to see it as the perfect solution to the varying needs of different devices. It works reasonably well on mobile, but still results in a fair amount of wasted bandwidth. And some pages (looking at you, registration interstitial) serve up 150kb+ images that aren't displayed at all on mobile devices.

It may be responsive to my screen size, but it certainly isn't responsive to my data plan.
Looks great, but returns 0 plan that includes maternity coverage in my area. I don't know if it's an issue with the app, or just the sad state of health insurance in the US... probably a bit of both.
Very cool. I wish I had this when shopping for insurance a year ago.

A "total annual cost" column would be helpful for making sense of the deductible/premium/co-pay relationship. Think of it as the "Price+Shipping+Tax" on shopping websites.

Ask the user how much he expects his doctors to charge him ("Annual Medical Bill") in the next twelve months, then calculate how much he would pay to the doctors and to the insurance company. Last time I bought health insurance I had to make a spreadsheet to calculate this. I would rather not repeat that mundane task again.

It might also be useful to have multiple predefined Annual Med Bills ($0, $1,000, $5,000, $20,000, etc). Displaying the output on a graph might make sense (AnnMedBill vs TotalAnnCost, with a curve for each plan). You should customize these to the user's age (a 23 year old may not go to the doctor for years at a time, but even a healthy 50yo will definitely go several times per year for checkups and *oscopies).

Mapping costs to life events (no doctor visits, a few visits, broken arm, healthy pregnancy, etc) would make it even more useful, but researching the necessary assumptions will take considerable work so just implement predefined dollar amounts as a version 1.

Keep up the good work, this idea has value!
True. Massachusetts asks your salary. If you're working a job that pays less than your UE benefits, then they make up the difference.
I did that and still now months later that 5% hasn't ceased to complain about it.
deleted for ignorant sarcasm. :)
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This varies significantly from state-to-state, by insurer, and even by plan. In places that do price based on actually composition for family plans, there's rarely a particularly linear correlation between family size and rates. (Also, good luck getting an insurer to tell you your actual rate on an online tool :/)
That makes a lot more sense than what you wrote above :)

Thanks for the clarification, it seemed a bit strange to see you 'commoditize' (sp?) another person like that. Of course it is common practice elsewhere, the whole body-shop scene revolves around that but you made it sound pretty (im)personal.
Welcome to Windows 8 – The Developer Preview
I think perhaps the best argument going forward is if ratios are sufficient for your story even with the labeling obscured (it just adds noise). Here, the ambiguity of the ordering on a pie chart might provide exactly the right vehicle.

The use case you describe is actually quite common. If I have eight products and want to see at a glance which are contributing the most to my bottom line, a pie chart is perfect. The two conditions are met:

1) I'm looking at a meaningful total (all of my products)

2) I'm only interested in the ratios among them

To clarify, showing ratios is fine in a pie chart as long as the pie represents a meaningful total. If I just showed my top 3 products rather than all of them (or at least all of them in some explicit category), then using a pie chart would be inappropriate because there is no meaningful total; a bar chart or table would better in that case.
Goldilocks zone planet discovered 36 light-years from Earth
Agency contract work, good or bad?  You decide...
Some of my thoughts/frustrations on working for agencies... look forward to hearing other's thoughts on this.
After the LA intro courses, see Strangs "Computational Science and Engineering":

* http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F706B428FB7BD52C

* http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?gl=DE&hl=de&p=...

based on the book of the same name. This is one of "name 5 books you would take with you on a desert island" kind of books, a beautiful work of art.
I found 6 plans with maternity coverage in my area (Kansas City). I'm sure they all have 2 year waiting periods, but that's not gurgeous' fault :-)
Except that according to IMF 2010 figures, the average American makes about 124% as much as the average Swede:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...
An article or other write-up is a better "leave behind" alternative. You can include all of the points you made that were not on the slides and even a FAQ to substitute for audience questions.
This fellow has been heavily downvoted (at 1:32 EST, anyway), but he has a point. For conveying information, pie charts are definitely not the best. To make an audience happy with your presentation, sometimes it is just best to give them the pies they want. Most laymen are used to them and find them friendlier than more complex charts.
The support for my 3G has been terrible. They broke the OS after 18 months, then dropped it entirely, 2 years and one month after launch.

3 years is the bare minimum time I would expect a mobile phone to be supported, given the prevalence of 3-year lock-in phone contracts. If you enter a contract for 3 years, the expected natural lifetime of that product is 3 years. It doesn't have to have the latest features, but no company should leave the OS a buggy, broken mess and then dump it.
Didn't work for me (Ubuntu).
Shervin Pishevar Announces $20 Menlo Ventures “Talent Fund”
I agree in general with the sentiment but don't like rule of an absolute # of slides. To this day one of the best presentations I've ever seen had 500+ slides and is an example of what a good presentation looks/feels like.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/archaeopteryx-bowkett
Startup to fund Startups
While poking around HN we always see stories about startup's being funded, how to bootstrap your startup, startup's seeking funding etc... From my perspective it's strage that in order to fund a startup or to be considered an investor to a startup you have to have an elite status already.

How about a startup to fund startups by allowing the general public to buy shares of the startup, sure there are lots of 'issues' to think about here but it's possible right ?

Maybe I'm late to the party and something like this already exists and I'm not aware... anyone ?
Anecdotal evidence to the contrary: My original 2G iPhone (now a heavy iPod touch for my daughter) is working fine and actually lasts longer than my 3GS unless it's on Netflix all day.
This is pretty fun! But would there be a way to avoid having too many videos of the same artist to help discover new ones maybe? Seems that most of the artists I tried returns a lot of songs with the same artist (especially the one searched).

Also why limit the number of results? I tried a few and it does not seem to be "hardcoded" anyway.
Probably requires WMV codecs?

Edit:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

Don't let the names scare you, they refer to the licenses not the quality of the code. Normally these would be detected and installed automatically, but there's a bug that prevents mms:// content from being autodetected.

edit2: fixed codecs, sorry
Unknown or expired link.
Could you solve the "Unknown or expired link." problem on hackernews?
That's some kind of logical fallacy... sort of like saying... "if you think that aircraft carrier is overpriced, you should build one and sell it yourself."

One can determine objectively whether something is overpriced based on comparisons with competing products.
There is no such thing as a "real name" anyway. The whole idea is quite silly. Is Lady Gaga allowed on Google+?
New sharing option "Comment-Only" in Google Docs
What, like Jon Harrop?
Vinod Khosla: Clean-Tech Not a Disaster; I Have Stealth Meat Startup
There are regulatory issues.
seems like overengineering.
Keep an index based on the user id with a sequence of date incidents and show the user a list of incidents with page location context.

Having the user remember a date seems more reasonable than some phrase they have to copy and paste from somewhere.

Would the user rather see this list:
Crash Incidents:

Section: Dashboard, Date: 08-20-2011 5:30amPST, Count: 2

Section: Report Page 1, Date: 08-22-2011 9:30amPST, Count: 1

or
Crash Incidents:

12 old crickets buzz happily

9 young monkeys smoke slowly

Asana makes weird decisions sometimes.
Isn't WebOS basically like that already? From what I understand, it uses most of the same tooling as regular HTML apps, just with some OS hooks. But then I don't know much.

If that's the case, then it's the closest to what you describe out of the mobile OSes out there.
That's why you should not be using averages for comparisons like this.

The low end in Sweden is based on the local minimum wage and the vacation days are mandated by law. In the US IKEA uses the room afforded by the law there to pay their workers what they can get away with.

Clearly these are not 'average' Americans or Swedes we're talking about, we are looking at the low end of the curve.

Cost of living for those American workers is likely not all that much different from their Swedish counterparts.
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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
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In the context of the tool analogy, you're right: we should pick libraries and not frameworks.

However, many software projects are complex machines---and like real world machines they're made of parts.

It'd better then to have a framework because the framework assures you that all these parts ought to work together, or at least have been designed to a certain abstract standard.

Imagine building a car but rather than being able to order Ford-fitted parts or Toyota-fitted parts, you'd just get generic parts that you then have to machine yourself in order to make work. Every part, every screw, everything. It'd take tens times as long as if you only had to machine rare parts (e.g. a 1965 engine block to fit a 1973 model frame).
Best .Net Articles for August 2011
According to TIMN it's running an Intel Core i5. Wow. Seriously? I realize this is just a developer preview device, but if Windows 8 needs that kind of power, then what about ARM tablets that are supposed to compete with iPad? How will it run on them? And how much battery life will it have on those Intel-powered tablets? These questions are all unanswered and Engadget didn't even touch on any of them.

"All of the above sections should give you a solid look at what Windows 8 is shaping up to be, but what about the hardware? While we got a look at the OS running on a few laptops and all-in-ones during the press preview meeting, we’ve spent most of the time testing the OS on the prototype tablet. Powered by a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor and a 64GB solid state drive, the system is absolutely no slouch on performance — everything from scrolling in the browser to the Start screen is extremely speedy and the system boots incredibly quickly. However, fan noise is very noticeable, as is the heat coming out of the top vent, and a fast boot doesn’t excuse the slow wake-up times compared to ARM-based cellphones and tablets."

http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/13/windows-8-tablet-photos-v...
I should've searched SO for this question. Thanks!
If an aircraft carrier is overpriced then there is a market for cheaper ones and you can make a bundle by putting your money where your mouth is (assuming you are right, of course).

If making aircraft carriers is not your thing then you shouldn't be telling other people how much to charge for theirs.

The only reason multiple competing products would come in to existence is because of people going the first route.
Globalization. The median "American" male worker makes less. What about globally?
Seconded. I'm an applied math PhD student (optimization) and I use linear algebra constantly. This book taught me everything.
#2 doesn't seem surprising. I'm sure they don't want to spend the manpower on it. Better to just take it down and let the original uploader re-up it.
They also showed ARM devices from NVIDIA, Samsung, and Qualcomm running the same build of Windows 8 with no problems.
Do people really still buy this line?

What line? Why else would they do it?

The control that they over the iOS platform has provided the first truly safe computing environment. This is, in my opinion, more important to its long-term success than the innovative user interface. This is the part that other companies have so-far failed to copy.

Apple don't seek control for it's own sake—it's a lot of work and very expensive—which is why other companies balk at it.
these days I'm driving a 1989 YJ wrangler. it's a hilariously impractical vehicle (not off roading yet), but it's unbelievably fun to work on, despite being carbureted. everything's just so accessible and simple.

before this I was all over the vws (1.8t, tdi, and then an idi), with all the usual vw stuff (especially diesels. I love diesels).

I think my next step will be either a subaru (track car), or a honda/bmw (just a get-around car).

I'm pretty limited tho since I live in Ottawa and have no garage. ask me if I've looked into starting a garage co-op here, and I'll tell you terrible insurance related woes.
I disagree with the sentiment that nomography has lost relevance. Anybody worth their salt doing interface design for complex systems is exploiting these principles and combining nomography and computing.

For example, a power plant is littered with sensors, reading various pressures, temperatures, valve settings, etc. The traditional interfaces—a dial for every value, as per Three Mile Island—does not help a human operator in understanding the relationships in the data. Today, interfaces are designed to better explain how different parts of a system interact, and a nomograph can help an operator build a better mental model of how a change in a series of inputs affects an output.

A simple calculation on a computer can produce all of the numbers defining the operating point of a turbine, but a good nomograph will convey the physical relationships of the system.

I realize these types of displays aren't seen by most people on a regular basis, but they're far from irrelevant.
Was at Hackday.TV this weekend - and must say these guys (creators of VHX) did an amazing job. Well done guys!
The rates your app returned were vastly different than running the same rate on numerous carrier websites. Your site showed rates that were sometimes less than half what the carrier site reported.

How do you generate your rates? Your math seems dangerously wrong in a lot of places, especially when requesting family rates.

(This is verifiable by running a rate on this website, and then going to one of the carriers websites and generating the same quote)

Disclaimer: I work in the health insurance industry, so many of these rates were obviously wrong as soon as I saw them.
I think the author mis-understands memory management. The following line argues that, without a reference to the prototype, the object is smaller:

"The other way it differs from the constructor pattern is that the prototype class is not instantiated. Which reduces the memory consumption of the object (among other things)."

Admittedly, there is some ambiguity because the second statement is a fragment. The way Crockford is quoted seems to support this fallacy, though.

Echoing what jashkenas said: anything you may save on a reference to the function's prototype (minimal), you lose when creating copies of each member function.

What Crockford was speaking about in his post was using "new" directly on a function definition. In that specific case, the reference to the prototype is useless, since it is blank. In the OP's "Mammal" example, the prototype reference provides key functionality that is well worth the cost.
Excellent site.

On general note, this site really emphasizes how fucked up is health system in US. There is complete lack of correlation how much a plan costs and how much benefits you get.

There should be version: WhyHealthInsuranceinUSSucks.com
What Tufte is missing is that a pie chart does immediately convey one additional piece of information that a bar chart can't without closer inspection: that the individual wedges add up to some meaningful whole. With a bar chart, you need some kind of explicit labeling to indicate that the bar represents a total, whereas with a pie chart it's implicit. It's inherent from the topology: as a circle, the pie chart is closed, implying that there is no additional data and that only the ratios are important. A series such as a bar chart or table is not closed, carrying the implication that it might simply have been truncated for reasons of space or clarity. A series-style chart also may or may not be presenting absolute values rather than ratios, and further inspection is needed by the viewer to distinguish which is the case.
We have certainly overclocked Power6 (and 7) in the lab, but it would be pretty much impossible for a customer to do it. I don't think we ever set up a LN2 rig, though.
Very nice. It's EONS better than Massachusetts' health insurance website (https://www.mahealthconnector.org/).

Idea: Perhaps add columns so you can sort plans by co-pay for Doctor visits, ER visits, an prescriptions? Maybe hide those columns by default so the GUI doesn't get too cluttered, but let users display them if desired.
And those federal agents and cops are exactly why Palantir Technologies is awesome.
Presumably the median figures are different, and the standard deviation much different. Those numbers would be more telling when it comes to the pay of low-skilled industrial workers.
http://learnyouahaskell.com/ is actually pretty good, and I'm not even a fan of the cutesy approach (cf. _why). You can read it all online, but you can also buy a hardcopy book.

Other than that, there's "Introduction to Functional Programming". I've heard people say that they liked the first edition better, but the second one uses Haskell…

On the Scheme side of things, you've got your "Little Schemer" and "SICP", of course. Both very highly recommended.

I haven't read a Scala book that puts a big emphasis on the functional part – and as it's a rather Tim Toady language, it might be better to focus on something simpler or more "pure".

I've lost my copy of "The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming" while moving, but the first few chapters I've read have been pretty great, especially if you also want to close some gaps in your math knowledge.
Facebook Revamps Friend Lists
This looks pretty nice, its good to see M$ being able to step so far out of their comfort zone vis-a-vis competition between the 'core' windows franchise and the 'other' products. My belief was that the thing that really killed the 'Tablet' version of windows was that they didn't have an 'all in' mode where there was no legacy PC stuff there.
I agree with sixtofour. There's no doubting the fact that ebooks are more "efficient" - from a space, price, and even environmental standpoint. However, as an avid book reader (physical books, I still have not switched over to the ebook readers), there's just something about having a book on my nightstand to read for a few minutes before calling it a night, or on my desk to take me away from my work during my lunch break. On the flip side, I have a million and one things I can be doing if I have my laptop open, and a book just has too much to compete with for my attention.

I'm a huge fan of technology and modernization, but I for one just don't see myself making the switch to ebooks in the near future.
Excellent execution, custom YAML fields allow for a lot of options.

I do the same, except I host at NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, which just feels right.
Seriously? I think the latter is a lot less scary in a lot of ways, and it contains a very specific identifier even if multiple things were happening at once. It also has built-in error correction in case the user reporting the error mis-reads one digit or something that "isn't important". And time zones in the identifier are just begging for misconfiguration problems.

Don't forget that the error phrase is not seen in a total vacuum. It is prepended with the sentence "If you contact us about this error, here is your unique error phrase", which even un-savvy users will recognise as a password (in the children's "what's the password?" sense), that they need to remember exactly and that doesn't itself directly carry information.

On the other hand, if you print out the date/time as part of the error message, the user is just going to glance at it, say, yup that's the current time, and then totally fail to record it (because there's no new information there, right?) or even worse, try to remember it and end up guessing at the time or even the date, making it almost worse than nothing.
I don't have all the evidence. I weigh the evidence I have, and believe the preponderance of evidence is on one side or another. You call it think, but really there's no difference between that and believing. If you think so you're living a lie that perpetuates this masquerade of believing we're partaking in science and in effect elevates this swinish political discussion to the level of science.
Am I the only one who virtually never uses windows desktop? I am either in particular app, or just click "start", type a few letters and run what I need. My desktop is just a background when nothing is running. Windows 8 new desktop might make it useful again.