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wikiburneron Show HN: Food News - HN Clone Built With Django and Drum, Uses Persona for Auth

Yep, I agree with you regarding third party comments for the most part, but I think by using Disqus there could be way less friction for account sign up in some circumstances.

In my case, there's another site that I frequent that has a huge Disqus community, but it is desperately in need of social bookmarking functionality. I'm considering launching an independent site to provide it.

wikiburneron Show HN: Food News - HN Clone Built With Django and Drum, Uses Persona for Auth

Very cool, thanks. I've been looking for something like this. I may fork it with a Disqus integration.

wikiburneron Ireland is to close a tax loophole used by Apple

Just curious - you hear rumors that the E.U. is considering clamping down on Ireland's tax laws.

Is there any truth to this? Could it happen anytime soon?

If so, does Ireland then consider leaving the E.U., or is Ireland's E.U. membership more important to those U.S. companies than the tax benefits?

wikiburneron Tips for Overcoming Shyness at Conferences

Just curious, how old were you when you made the big switch?

I wonder if it's one of those things that's harder to learn the further along in life you are, like learning a foreign language, learning to code, playing an instrument, etc.?

wikiburneron TextTeaser – An automatic summarization algorithm

Yep, pretty well known!

Anyway, thanks for open sourcing - really cool.

wikiburneron Why I Now Believe the Glass Ceiling Is Real

Furthermore, she states that she floated the idea of resigning months earlier, and then tendered her resignation because she decided on her own that this guy flaking in a very unprofessional manner somehow invalidated her leardership. It sounds like her co-founders were angry and upset at the candidate, not her.

I think there could be a lot of truth to what Sheryl Sandberg says about men's self-confidence and sense of entitlement (often to a fault) being a huge factor in the disparity in male/female leadership in tech.

wikiburneron TextTeaser – An automatic summarization algorithm

Is this a well known text summarization tool? I hadn't heard of it before this post.

wikiburneron Air Gaps

Is there an effective way to "mostly" airgap, if you need Internet connectivity for your work? This is a comment I posted on a similar thread a few weeks ago.

=========================================

Just curious, how would airgapping be practical if you need Internet connectivity for your "real work"? For example, let's say you run a quant trading firm and the algorithms you're concerned about being stolen need connectivity to download live trading info, and then after processing that info they need to communicate buy/sell orders to the outside world. Are there any methods that could be used that would prevent all communication with a secure system (with an airgap level of certainty) besides the strictly defined data you need to do your "real work"? -----

gaius 19 days ago | link

Sure, you would just use Radianz, and that is in fact what everyone does. This is a very solved problem! Bloomberg also operates a private network, and there are others too. These systems can operate perfectly well without access to the public Internet. A couple of jobs ago I worked at a financial services firm with 2 networks and 2 PCs on everyone's desk. Rednet for outside connectivity, and an internal network for real work, and never the twain shall meet. NO-ONE needs the Internet for real work, let's be honest, just for goofing off. Time we all started to prioritize security over mere convenience. -----

wikiburner 19 days ago | link

Yep, maybe trading wasn't the best example, although they are still effectively at the mercy of the security of their data providers network - which admittedly is probably quite good. Let's say you're a P.I., journalist, researcher, law enforcement, or intel agency, and need to automate news or people searches for some reason. If you were able to very strictly define the data you're expecting to receive, isn't there any way you could automatically pass this data on to a secure system without opening yourself up to exploits?

wikiburneron We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

We seem to be having completely different arguments. At no point did I say there was no demand for Obamacare. I'm saying the government has shown a remarkable level of incompetence at running what's essentially a simple lead gen website. I'm also suggesting that this probably doesn't bode well for the successful administration of the program.

Regarding your second point, it's become somewhat of a meme in the press that no reporter has been able to verify or interview a single Obamacare sign up. That's what I'm referring to - not that I myself haven't by chance come across such an interview.

wikiburneron We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

It really seems like you're trying to insinuate that because press bias and bad reporting exist in the world, then somehow this rollout hasn't been a complete failure - despite the tidal wave of press coverage exhaustively demonstrating what a fiasco it's been. I understand this one source could have ulterior motives (although from the news reports I've seen, there have been congressional and HHS sources echoing it), but the notion that the press is basically conspiring to torpedo Obamacare strains credulity.

Even if there were several orders of magnitude more signups then are being reported, the numbers would still be a disaster, so I'm genuinely not sure what your point is.

wikiburneron This Bird Can Stay in Flight for Six Months Straight

Slightly related, but here's a recent article on a "Drone That Can Fly Continuously For 5 Years". I think this was submitted recently and didn't take off, but it's pretty interesting:

http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2013/10/07/aerospace-company-de...

wikiburneron We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

Hey spiffyman, reasonable points, but it really looks to me like josefresco is implying that the launch is getting unduly harsh treatment in the media, but maybe I misread it.

Also, regarding the 20 million figure, here's the quote:

Seven percent of Americans report that somebody in their household has tried to sign up for insurance through the health care exchanges, according to an AP-GfK poll. While that's a small percentage, it could represent more than 20 million people.

As many as 20 million "tried to" sign up, based on their extrapolation of some polling data.

The last I heard, no media outlet has been able to find a single successful sign up to interview, and they are definitely looking for one.

The CBS video also claims there have been only "a handful" of sign ups, and it's getting reported in lots of other places. It could be inaccurate, but these are mainstream outlets reporting this, not Breitbart or Drudge. The administration is refusing to release sign up numbers, which certainly doesn't look good.

wikiburneron We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

I wonder if there's an idea for a startup for startups here:

Navigating Govermental Bureaucratic Morass as a Service

wikiburneron Poll: What are your liked and disliked programming languages?

Watch out, or PG will make it so that you see nothing but javascript stories for the next year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734

wikiburneron We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

How about the CBS video linked above? Or the links below? Or the countless other media accounts of the launch being a "complete disaster"? Or all the comments on this very page of HNers not being able to use the site?

Not even the administration's biggest defenders are trying to spin this as a successful launch.

Are you really implying the media as a whole is biased against Obama?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57606633/obamacare-we...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/poll-rollout-health-exchanges...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-h...

wikiburneron We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

Scaling on the web is basically a solved issue for sites with such limited functionality. Even the CIA is using AWS, so I can't believe the regulatory and security hurdles were prohibitive.

To spend this kind of money on sites with these kinds of results is just disgraceful:

"The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the 'single digits,' according to the Washington Post."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57606633/obamacare-we...

wikiburneron Fox News Touchscreens are Microsoft Perceptive Pixel Displays Running Windows 8

Did you seriously link to a Huffington Post article to criticize the bias of Fox News?

I can't defend Fox's practices, but the fact that you aren't railing against MSNBC as well makes me think you're far from an impartial observer. Fox News and MSNBC are two sides of the same ridiculous coin, but media bias only seems to bother you when it's coming from the right.

wikiburneron Prediction Markets

My impression was that they were sort of ignored because they had academic/research value as cover.

I believe the Fed's recent interest in them had something to do with Intrade closing down.

Here's a snippet from a forum thread that's relevant:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=125104

From Wikipedia: Because online gambling is outlawed in the United States through federal laws and many state laws as well, most prediction markets that target U.S. users operate with "play money" rather than "real money": they are free to play (no purchase necessary) and usually offer prizes to the best traders as incentives to participate. Notable exceptions are Intrade/TradeSports, which escapes U.S. legal restrictions by operating from Dublin, Ireland, where gambling is legal and regulated, and the Iowa Electronic Markets, which operates from the University of Iowa under the cover of a no-action letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and allows bets up to $500.

wikiburneron A 3D printed toothbrush for all your teeth

The Reach Access ones are even easier. No stretching your mouth open to get to the molars. Highly recommended.

wikiburneron Nate Silver to would-be data scientists: Don’t sweat the degree, do the work

The practice of statistical inference requires only a few key skills.

Just curious, what do you think they are?

wikiburneron Replacing Python

:) I guess what I meant to say was Java speed (or greater) Python.

wikiburneron Replacing Python

Thanks for the link. I was just poking around the Cython site myself, and it looks like they've come a long way since I last looked into it. It seems that they're getting much closer to full compatibility.

It makes me wonder if we're closing in on the day when Cython gets rolled into Python proper, and you can just "import static-types" to activate optional typing, then add some static typing to your code, and you would get Java performance from your Python code.

wikiburneron Replacing Python

My impression was that you sometimes have to refactor your Python to make the code more C-like. From what I have heard generators aren't supported, and there are other situations where you need to make your loops (and other elements of your code) more C-like.

That's not the case?

You just add typing to your python and you're good to go?

wikiburneron Replacing Python

Isn't Cython a solution that frequently requires significant code changes (refactoring to C-like code) beyond adding typing?

wikiburneron Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

Just wondering, why do you think the U.S. military seems so paranoid about China's research into this? Everything I know about carrier killer missiles comes from mainstream media coverage in response to various U.S. generals sounding the alarm about China's progress in this technology, and its potential to end the U.S.'s dominance of the Pacific. Is it just budgetary saber-rattling?

Also, what happens if China fires, say, a few dozen of those missiles at once at a carrier group? After all, those missiles are a hell of a lot cheaper than a carrier.

wikiburneron Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

Yep, maybe trading wasn't the best example, although they are still effectively at the mercy of the security of their data providers network - which admittedly is probably quite good.

Let's say you're a P.I., journalist, researcher, law enforcement, or intel agency, and need to automate news or people searches for some reason. If you were able to very strictly define the data you're expecting to receive, isn't there any way you could automatically pass this data on to a secure system without opening yourself up to exploits?

wikiburneron Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

I think China's R&D in "Carrier Killer Missiles" is probably more likely to do it:

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

wikiburneron Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

Just curious, how would airgapping be practical if you need Internet connectivity for your "real work"?

For example, let's say you run a quant trading firm and the algorithms you're concerned about being stolen need connectivity to download live trading info, and then after processing that info they need to communicate buy/sell orders to the outside world.

Are there any methods that could be used that would prevent all communication with a secure system (with an airgap level of certainty) besides the strictly defined data you need to do your "real work"?

wikiburneron Shopify POS

:) - Point of Sale - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_sale

wikiburneron Isaac Asimov's predictions for what the world will be like in 2014

The suicidal in lower income situations could succumb to it in more subtle ways, for example heroin, crack, or meth overdose, suicide by gang, suicide by cop, etc.