WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

gandalfu's comments

gandalfu | 9 years ago | on: Authentication Techniques for APIs

Why certificate based authentication wasn't included?

The server stores the public cert from all clients and uses it to authenticate at the transport layer. No shared secrets either.

gandalfu | 9 years ago | on: Air India Taking Advantage of Tailwinds

No trolling, It seems to me the airplane does not have enough surface area (sail) to be pushed by the wind.

My final conclusion is relative movement, the jet stream is moving at speed X vs the ground and the airplane at speed Y vs the surrounding wind, the airplane moves then at speed X+Y vs the ground.

My question is now, a GPS based speedometer will read X+Y speed. A wind based one will read just X.

I should have asked if the airplane is moving faster vs the surrounding wind.

gandalfu | 9 years ago | on: Air India Taking Advantage of Tailwinds

Why is the plane going faster? Less resistance from the wind due to the smaller speed difference? I don't believe the air can push the airplane...

Any physicist care to explain?

gandalfu | 10 years ago | on: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol 3-0 [video]

Its a matter of language.

Our model of representation of Go fails at expressing the game/strategies of AlphaGo is showing, we are communicating in the board in different languages, no wonder everyone looking the at games is stomped by the machine "moves".

Our brains lack the capacity of implementing such algorithms (understanding such languages), but we can still create them. We might see in the future engine A played against engine B and enjoy the matches.

No one is surprised by a machine doing a better job with integer programming/operational research/numerical solutions etc.

gandalfu | 10 years ago | on: Going Fast Slowly

Spanish: visteme despacio que tengo prisa

Or: visteme despacio que ando apurado

gandalfu | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are your recommended reads that are available for free?

"The Macroscope" by Joël de Rosnay, a book on the systems approach

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/macrbook.html

This book is an excellent, easy to read introduction to cybernetics and systems thinking, with applications to living organisms, the economy and the world as a whole. The main theme is that the complex systems which govern our life should be looked at as a whole, rather than be taken apart into their constituents. The different systems, processes and mechanisms are beautifully illustrated with examples and pictures.

Although the text is over 20 years old, this visionary document is still highly relevant to our present situation and state of knowledge.

It is particularly recommended to people who wish to get an understanding of the basic concepts and applications of systems theory and cybernetics.

gandalfu | 11 years ago | on: Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide

Anecdote here: I recently bought a x200 and installed libreboot, I decided to go full on tin hat and removed the wlan modem and replaced the wifi card with one with no DMA access.

The computer now boots into GRUB (loaded in the motherboard ROM) and from there loads grub in the disk drive.

When I received the laptop the battery was dead, wouldn't last one second. After libreboot it seems that linux energy management is less conservative and the battery now is charged and lasts 3h+.

gandalfu | 11 years ago | on: How we built analytics.usa.gov

The implications are really scary. Im the first one to applaud the new digital office initiative and the talent behind, but when it comes to third party software the government should trust no one, not matter their competence.

Scary scenario #1: All of my interactions with the government are known to google.

Scary scenario #2: Google CDN is compromised and malware is served to everyone!

gandalfu | 11 years ago | on: Announcing Spark 1.3

I believe one of the key advantages of Spark over Hadoop is being able to run the full stack on a small environment (single machine) and do all the coding there without the need of a cluster just for development.
page 1
more