💰 Using AI to Cut a $195K Hospital Bill Down to $33K
A sharp reminder of how algorithmic assistance can empower patients in navigating an opaque and exploitative healthcare pricing system.
A personal account reveals how a hospital charged extreme rates for medical equipment and ventilator use—up to 2,300% of Medicare’s reimbursement. The institution allegedly created its own billing system to overcharge patients, exposing widespread abuses in U.S. medical billing.
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🌞 Vitamin D Cuts Cold Risk and Duration in Deficient Adults
Compelling clinical data reinforcing vitamin D’s immune-supporting role—findings that could reshape preventive strategies in populations prone to deficiency.
A randomized double-blind trial in India showed that daily 2,000 IU vitamin D₃ supplementation halved the rate and duration of respiratory infections among adults with low vitamin D levels. Participants also reported milder symptoms, with no safety issues observed over six months.
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🎲 A Brief History of Random Numbers
An elegant blend of technical insight and historical storytelling—a great read for anyone curious about the math and mechanics behind randomness.
The crates.io page for ‘oorandom’ presents a minimalist Rust pseudorandom number generator based on the PCG algorithm. It offers deterministic, seedable random number generation with a tiny footprint and fast compile times, and includes an engaging overview of the evolution of randomness—from physical methods to modern PRNG algorithms like PCG and xorshift.
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🖼️ The Present and Future of Progressive Image Rendering
A valuable technical read for frontend and performance engineers assessing how next-gen image formats affect perceived speed and visual experience.
Jake Archibald delves into the current and future landscape of progressive image rendering across browsers, analyzing formats such as JPEG, WebP, AVIF, and JPEG XL. He compares decoding behavior, partial display handling, and browser inconsistencies, emphasizing that actual UX gains depend on bandwidth and optimized implementation.
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🕸️ A New Graph Layout Algorithm for SpiderMonkey’s SSA Compiler
An excellent showcase of engineering clarity—IonGraph exemplifies how domain-specific visualization can make compiler architecture more approachable and transparent.
Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey team unveiled IonGraph—a tool for visualizing the internal graphs of its JavaScript and WebAssembly compiler. Its custom layout algorithm provides clear, interactive control-flow visualizations, outperforming general-purpose tools like Graphviz while rendering complex functions in milliseconds.
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