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wikkiwa

29 karma · joined February 11, 2011

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wikkiwa··on First impressions using Julia
I have been using Julia extensively for about a year as a data analysis tool / R and Matlab replacement. I can say it is very good, especially well suited for exploring and processing large amounts of data. Often when you're trying to understand a set of data, you don't know what kinds of filters and transformations you're going to want to try. If those transformations end up not being easily vectorizable, then they will be dog slow to run in R or Matlab, and probably inconvenient and more difficult to create in C. For these situations, Julia is perfect.
wikkiwa··on The Man and the Lion Puzzle: Pursuit and Evasion Game Theory
There's actually a pretty fascinating branch of game theory devoted to these kinds of problems.

Differential game theory poses these situations as optimal control problems, with evaders and pursuers each having a separate control and opposite objective functions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_game

wikkiwa··on Abandoning Algebra Is Not the Answer
Let's just have the chinese do our math and then pay them with the money we borrow from them.
wikkiwa··on Meteor Raises $11.2M from Andreessen Horowitz
BUT CAN IT SHARE PICTURES???
wikkiwa··on The Crushing Cost of Health Care
Yeah that's the scary thing. The actual cost is much higher. How much of this is inefficiency/"overcharging" is up for debate but it's pretty clear that since the bulk of the cost of healthcare for most people is paid by someone else, there's no incentive to economize.

Plus modern medicine is AMAZING, but the surrounding economy isn't strong enough to support it. People simply aren't productive enough to pay for the cost of the most advanced treatments.

wikkiwa··on Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost
Is it not illegal to intercept private communications without the parties' consent? Seems like this opens them up to a massive lawsuit...
wikkiwa··on Mark Cuban: High-Frequency Traders Are the Ultimate Hackers
Here's an interview with a pro high frequency trader from a top shop if you're interested. http://techzinglive.com/page/1049/185-tz-interview-james-tho...
wikkiwa··on Pair (YC W12) raises $4.2M round of funding
This discriminates against love triangles.
wikkiwa··on The Only Way to Stop SOPA
Money will impossible to get out of politics as long as the government has massive power to regulate the economy. As long as congress can give subsidies and contracts to favored industries and firms (necessarily at the expense of less favored firms and industries, who have to compete in the market) and also increase taxes and regulations on disfavored industries (finance, oil), then businesses would be insane to not spend as much money as they need to paying off senators to make sure they don't get screwed.

Everyone who votes for politicians that promise to increase Washington's power needs to realize that they're also voting to increase the influence of money in politics.

wikkiwa··on Women (and everyone else, really) should do startups
I have a feeling this comment thread is going to be really productive and insightful.
wikkiwa··on Why don’t women get drag-and-drop?
what's the over under on this being cited in a lack-of-women-in-tech article in the next two weeks?