Reaffirming my forecast.

The question is stated as delivery of a "S-300 or S-400 missile system." A "system" requires all the major operational components to be delivered (search radar, targeting radar, missile launcher, command post, etc.). Regarding hiding the system, while I agree that generally you don't want to give away the exact location of your military assets, it is important to credibly signal your enemies if you expect to deter them. Most of the Iranian comments to this point are probably inward directed, to create a sense of strength in the aftermath of the nuclear deal with the West. Outward directed statements (to Israel) will come when the system is actually functioning.

Files
Inactive-102
made a comment:

@cmeinel, @Heffalump, they can pragmatically shut off scraping any time they want. If you ask, they will say they discourage it. Discourage and prevent/admonish are two different words. It is hard to believe that they made the site as orderly and porous as it is with no intention of letting people scrape. Scraping is legal until people actively tell you not to and take measures to stop you. Any Windows 10 purchaser will have to acknowledge that our whole lives are being scraped constantly by Silicon Valley and the resulting data is at the core of the fortunes of the Googles and Amazons of this world. So let's not feel too bad about scraping where scraping is being de facto permitted. Let them say No absolutely and then we can just walk away from this game, because without the scraping and without the IARPA connection, there's not really that much to do except throw darts in favor of "Challenges" without prizes that nobody is watching. I'm just saying. Be yourself.

So once again, as a reminder, here is the API:

1. All users are serially indexed, look at the URL
2. There is a "link" button for every comment. All comments are serially indexed. Every forecast is contained in a comment. Look at the URL.
3. All questions are serially indexed, click on a question, look at the URL.

So there you have all users, all forecasts, all comments. There for the taking. A little elbow grease is required. There are courses for that, you just have to commit to putting your own time into getting the skills: https://www.coursera.org/learn/python-network-data

Files
Inactive-43
made a comment:

@Khalid It looks to me like SciCast had considerably more activity in its final year, thanks to substantial cash prizes. OTOH, this also sparked a major cheating problem. On the third hand, they developed a decent way of closing and invalidating questions. IMHO, the Scicast/George Mason University team has a good chance of winning a CREATE contract, and likely will be using an Inkling type market platform. You can read their report for the 2014-2015 season here: http://blog.scicast.org/download/scicast-final-report-public/

I give them huge smiley face points for being much more open about their research than certain competitors.

Files
Inactive-43
made a comment:

@000 Two more easily scrapeable items.

To get everyone's "accuracy scores" for every challenge, scrape through this index: https://www.gjopen.com/memberships/1/challenges/1/scores
Substitute user number for the first "1" and challenge number for the second "1" which currently comprises the set of {1,2,3,5}

If a player has entered less than all current challenges, but more than zero, you can get the scores for unentered challenges as well by this technique.

Next fun scrape target: the source code for each comments page has a finer grained time stamp than what is on the browser-displayed page, even if no time and date are visible on the page, for example, from the above noted https://www.gjopen.com/memberships/1/challenges/1/scores:
<span data-localizable-timestamp="2015-12-29T16:13:20Z">Dec 29, 2015 04:13PM UTC</span>

Fine grained time stamps can help us detect bots, for example.

Files
username-deleted 688
made a comment:

I see someone as me up voted Lars @000 Amazons and Googles comment before I got here. Thank you. :)

Files
Inactive-102
made a comment:

@ravel, you have reached Level 3.

Files
Heffalump
made a comment:

@ravel
Best. Post. Ever. You win.

Files
Heffalump
made a comment:

@khalid email me for the user data from yesterday. Who knows, if you contribute to the analysis, maybe you'll get a copy regularly

Files
Heffalump
made a comment:

@000 no, they can TRY. And I can't stand semicolon-terminated-line languages. A semicolon is a precious thing that should be cherished, loved, and used sparingly, just like the Oxford comma (see what I did, there?)

All of us who are scraping should really just get together and share so we can cut the traffic load down.

Files
Heffalump
made a comment:

So is this question going to be reconsidered, or we all just bragging for the sake of being booted so we can go get some work done instead of sniffing the cheese?

Files
Inactive-102
made a comment:

@Heffalump: I hear you; but I do have concerns about sharing code with an unknown Sir or Madam from an unknown country, whose purpose is to extract information from a website which is obviously a venture of Air America:
As you can see:
It feels a bit dicey.

If you can assure me that you have 4 beefy Russian pimps in an old Mercedes with a roomy trunk who can whisk me to guaranteed safety should a misunderstanding arise, then you will have refined my thinking.

Files
Files
Tip: Mention someone by typing @username