attaboyjon

Ok so we have a state actor with unlimited resources attempting to manipulate our elections. Our defense consists of programmers and sysadmins working for the local county making sub-40s per year in salary (no offense). The election software is written on Windows 95 running with an Access database backend. I am not kidding.

Of course we've already been hacked. I personally think the 2016 had to be hacked given that no one, even Trump, thought he would get close to winning. I know it sounds like conspiracy theory bullshit, but come on, they already got Hillary's emails from the DNC. How hard could it be to target a certain number of counties in key states?

Certainly there are other techies out there who agree with me?

To be honest, Voter ID addresses a made up problem. Search for wikipedia for 'Voter ID laws in the United States'.

Regardless of your political persuasion, I suggest you read a bit about how these voting machines are built. Assuming you are in tech, you will be horrified. Do you feel comfortable knowing your voting machine was written in VBA with a Excel spreadsheet as the backing data store? This is the level of incompetence we are dealing with. Integrity of our elections is an incredibly important issue for both parties, and this was a problem before Trump, Russia and the 2016 election.

I also suggest you read up on the stuxnet virus if you want to see what a determined state actor can create given unlimited resources.

I believe this is why Stubb's - BBQ restaurant and popular concert venue in Austin is changing it's name in the near future.

The book 'Cod' by same author is also a really good, if not better book. I'm always impressed when someone can make a good story out of a seemingly boring topic.

http://a.co/0tknqbI

It's important to remember what drives this - employers often like to think their problems are 'big data' and by god, they need the over-engineered solution. Your peers who interview you will toss your resume in the trash if you are not buzzword compliant. Hate the game not the player.

I solved my problem by getting serious massage therapy. For a long time I thought I had carpal tunnel, but the real problem was super tight muscles in my back and shoulder. After one painful massage the burning, tingling and pain in my hand and wrist was gone. Outside of getting an occasional massage, the answer was a regular routing of weightlifting.

You are right. It is a solid DB. I was more pointing out that if you have to move off Mysql, there are excellent options other than adopting a new columnar datastore.

You're right. I started using mysql in 2000 when it was still a toy. It's an outdated bias :) I was more flabergastered they would choose 'InifiniDB' when there are so many other great options out there.

I've come to the conclusion that the problem in tech is that all the people doing the work are in their early twenties and have no idea what they are doing. Once they get some experience they are quickly promoted to the CTO position. Rinse and repeat.

What we have here is a classic dbms problem and no one at Movio seems to know how to deal with that. Instead of migrating from Mysql to something serious (Postgres) they move to some columnar DB no one has heard of. Nevermind that postgres and a reasonably priced DBA and a little thought put into their data model/queries could probably handle all their issues.

Sorry for the snark, cheers on a successful product.

What technology do the team members know best? What have they built something with in the past? That's the technology you should use.

This should be the top comment. You can tell from the article that the WSJ is trying really, really hard to push the 'intolerant liberals' angle. From what I can tell, the only person cited who really left due to politics was Thiel.

The question is how will power be distributed between the owners of the automated plants and the 'subsistence' class? Will there be a true meritocracy, or will the children of the plant owners get all the best jobs? Judging from the way third world economies work, I would not assume the best. This I think is the reason for fear and protectionism.

Well no. I pay for it all out of pocket. My deductible is high enough that I pay for all that medication. It's about $6000/year. My insurance premiums are $1400 per month by the way. So no, there's no magical cost saving being passed back to me.

Well yeah that's the problem. They dont pass the discount on to me. I pay full retail price, and they keep the discount. This is why Express Scripts is a $100 BILLION company. And that's for managing Formularies you say?

Express Scripts Holding Company is the largest pharmacy benefit management (PBM) organization in the United States,[20] with 2013 revenues of $104.62 billion.[21] In 2012 Express Scripts' $29.1 billion acquisition of rival Medco Health Solutions (once the nation's largest PBM) created "a powerhouse in managing prescription drug benefits."

Actually the PBMs are a big villain here. They pocket the difference between the retail price of a drug and the discounts they negotiate with the drug makers. They choose the drugs on their formulary based on this spread.

This one of the reasons why you will see prices for drugs like Insulin going up with each manufacturer raising price in lock-step. The drug makers are not competing to sell the consumer insulin, they are competing to get on the formulary of the PBM.

If you feel that the tone of this post overstates how bad Trump's order is, I suggest you read the article linked to in the original author's post. It goes into much more detail and gives you a better idea on why what Trump is doing is so bad -

https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-tr...

If you read the article linked by the AVC author you will think otherwise.

https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-tr...

On paper, none of the Star Wars movies ever made a cent of profit. On paper, Google and Facebook had not profits in America.

ACA insurance profit are loss are similar. With enough creative accounting the business could be made unprofitable to squeeze concessions from the Obama administration.

Look at all the major insurers stock price since Obamacare began. That will tell you all you need to know about this story. If you think they are making all that money because the non-ACA health insurance business suddenly got real good, I have a bridge to sell you.

I think you may be wrong on the pre-existing conditions. My understanding is that previously someone like myself (Type 1 Diabetic) could not buy insurance on the individual market (I'm self-employed) because the insurance company selling me insurance is basically guaranteed to lose money.

I'm a Type 1 Diabetic. I am self-employed. Without ACA I could NOT have bought insurance for myself and my family.

I have a family of six, 2 adults and 4 kids. I pay $1400 per month for a plan with a deductible high enough that I will pay for all of my expenses.

I worked on top of my full time job doing web dev for Ad agencies, usually php, asp.net or CMS work. Billed at $80/hr, probably netting 40-60k per year on the side. I had always hoped it would lead me to a career as an independent, but that rate is not enough to make a living with a family. I eventually made it to being an independent, but I had to switch to doing enterprise consulting in a niche market at a much higher rate.

Before we had reasonable espresso in Austin, I had my own PID'd Silvia. I had had good coffee Vivace in Seattle and wanted to replicate it.

But boy was it a lot of work, your home-roasted beans have to be the right freshness, the milk has to be super fresh and your tamping technique has to be spot on.

Now that we have good coffee in Austin I cant see going back to doing it myself.