skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> In 2016 the polls were arguably "correct" in that, though they incorrectly predicted a Clinton win, the results were still mostly within the margin of error, i.e., the polls weren't really predicting one candidate or another because Clinton's lead was too small to be statistically significant.

The problem is that Presidential elections are always pretty close. It has been almost a half century since any candidate has gotten more than 60% of the popular vote.

If the result is always within the margin of error, how useful does that make the polls?
Thus far it actually seems to be due different response rates between Republican versus Democratic voters. Democrats seem more likely to respond to pollsters.

Of course pollsters already know this, so they weight the samples to reflect underlying demographics, but it gets tricky to do this accurately if your surveying response rate is 1% to 2%.

And of course... the forecast modelers know this. Which is what Gelman discusses in his post. Given that they now have 2016, and 2020 as examples of presidential polling errors, modelers need to shift their priors in a number of ways to account for what looks like a persistent undersampling of GOP voters.
There are two possible explanations for why US polling stopped tracking US election results in 2004 and now underestimates conservative vote margins.

Either conservatives have started lying to pollsters about their voting intentions or conservative officials started manipulating the vote totals in their favor.

Take your pick as to which possible explanation is most palatable and/or most probable.
I've been standing on a paddleboard in calm waters, surrounded by people to my left and right that are convincing me of a wave coming on their side and don't know the people on the other side of me believe the same thing.

It's not surprising that technologists from the same schools and cities all failed to understand this again.

The filter bubble affects us all, including you, including me, including the people you think are completely brainwashed. I just happen to VPN with new browser sessions a lot and get to see it.

I also don't block people with different ideologies lol so there's that.
But you'd expect to see a difference between stated support of Trump between regular polls and anonymous polls, where Trump supporters might be a little less "shy", but according to Fivethirtyeight that's not the case. I think something more complicated is going on, possibly sampling error rather than (only) shy supporters.
Anyone you'd hire would be risking breaking the law in the U.S. or some other country, plus you'd have no legal protection if they decided to screw you over.
I think he's implying that individual humans have their own motives different from those conducting the polls, and you shouldn't expect completely reliable data without incentivizing those you are polling to be truthful.
Is there an open-source alternative to GitHub that has all of the (A) Features and (B) UI Niceness that GitHub had 10 years ago?
defying -> defining

(v good comment/answer)
Where is your evidence for this? The election itself IS an anonymous poll of the population, and clearly many millions are voting for Trump. There is no shyness about them.
Seems like I was unclear - I'm saying that Trumps lawsuit is frivolous, and is evidence that he is meddling in the election, not that there is actually something suspect being done by the counters.
Hi folks,

This is what your bailout money bought.

Hi folks,

Your job interview is now an Olympic event. Our jobs will always be protected.

Hi folks,

Be sure to live in a trailer if you move here. It's the only place you can afford.

Hi folks,

Just step over the passed out junkie in the street. It's your fault anyways.

In summary: something something something cute, you deal with it I'm rich

In all seriousness, if I do something like this, I don't eat!
Hey Thief,
Which team you work on? Why would you cheer taking other people's work and defend the monetization? Do you publish PRs secretly pulling from public records, huh? You are not welcome here.
"The problem is that there's no real way of predicting who pollsters should be interviewing.

That isn't a problem. That's why random sampling and confidence intervals exist.

"Polls tend to focus on 'likely voters'" - no they don't. They randomly sample, and then ask people whether they plan to vote or not; they still get, and report, the numbers amongst registered voters, vs likely (as defined however) voters.
Lying or other deliberate strategy probably isn't the issue.

Propensity to participate in polls having even a slight correlation to preferences on the issues being polled will create a systematic polling error, however, and it's an effect that is difficult to measure because how do you measure the preferences of nonrespondents?
I think Mac's old System 7 was the gold standard for effective icon design.

https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/settings/menu/macos70....

Even after it grew in numbers, I never had difficulty finding things just based on visual alone.

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/classic-mac-os-1994...
I think it’s behind the dash somewhere.
Yes, most other democratic countries do.

American-style slow results have more in common with the kinds of places that need time to "massage" the results than with the electoral processes in most democracies.
How does your anecdote support the claim that marijuana is a gateway drug? Your story supports the "MJ isn't harmless" position (agreed), not "MJ leads to harder drug use" (more doubtful).

As far as I know, most states that legalize set aside some portion of the generated tax revenue to support drug treatment programs, which at least partially addresses the "MJ isn't harmless" issue.
One reason most polls were off in 2016, and now (polls in states that are competitive), could be attributed to "shy" voters.

While most people will proudly claim they want to vote one way or the other, a good percentage of the population, doesn't want to say 'I Vote Trump', because they are afraid that their voting choice will not be socially acceptable in their circles.
If DMN inhibition makes you feel more connected and less depressed, I would expect constant attention-grabbing distractions like cell phones to have the same positive effect - but they certainly don't.
You sound Indian. Do you have toilet at home and does everyone poo in loo?
I didn't go high tech like that. I just went to home depot and bought some cheap tubing, fittings, pressure compensating drippers (which auto-regulate the flow), stakes, and a 3-way Orbit timer. They have free catalog at the store, which you can just take to plan out your set up. I also don't use fertilizer in the water - instead I use manure in the soil. So I laid out the thicker plastic tubing, then connected smaller tubing that goes to each plant. Set up the timers to give it sufficient time (you may need to set them up to water twice a day if you have very hot weather and want to save some water). Then you just turn it on and walk away. It takes care of itself. In my garden I also have to sprinkle some pellets against slugs, and install a motion sensitive scarecrow sprinkler which scares away the deer. That's pretty much it. Check on it every now and then to make sure your plants aren't wilted in the afternoon. Once you dial in the timings, it's completely hands off.
IMHO you're looking at it from a software engineer lens - from a product lens as I understand it, this is huge for OEMs as it's a way to upsell while gaining the ability to target a significantly larger chunk of the market. It provides a way to get 4k dual monitor support for pros and marketable video game support for prosumers, both in ~$600 fanless ultrabooks
The Sneaky Plan to Subvert the Electoral College
(not my) video explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUX-frlNBJY
The advantages of using Wasm in this case would be: multiplaform/multichipset binaries along with a completely sandboxed environment.

It's true that the speed will be a bit slower (I expect to be 5-10% slower than native), but in some cases the gains could outweight the relative slowdown.
For a long time I was a righty that used a mouse left handed. It was just how I learned. It wasn't until I got older and fps controls changed from the numpad or arrow keys as default to wasd for movement that I eventually just switched. That and going through school and being at work with mice being on the right side.
I haven't heard of this. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me; 口 is an obsolete word for "mouth" which survives as part of other words like 人口 "population" or 出口 "exit [noun]" in the senses of "mouth" or "entrance; opening". (Compare "the mouth of a cave".)
There was clearly a polling error, so yes, my statement doesn't really stand for southern states like Florida where the count is complete.

What I'd be more interested in is an article with more meat than this one, something that analyzes a single model and talks about what, if anything, went wrong. 538 has already mentioned that they plan on doing a post-mortem.

The problem with presidential elections is that they happen infrequently with a large time gap between, and we only have a few decades of useful data to model from. For me, as a non-statistician, it's difficult for me to look at the numbers and know whether this one particular reality was adequately accounted for by the model. 538 gave chances of each candidate winning - they didn't state that they'll have exactly x margins of victory. Nate's stance before the election was that Biden could survive a significant polling error, and that's about where we seem to be now.

I'm looking forward to the 538 post-mortem.
There are way more explanations than that. For example pollsters might simply not be talking to conservatives.

If you don't have a representative sample of the population your poll will be inaccurate.
Botnets that were active in the months leading up to the election but that suddenly shut down. Anyone looking at that?

If Trump or Biden had outside (foreign) help from anywhere it is likely , given the porous nature of our election security that some of the external structures needed to make it work have been dismantled since they are no longer useful.

Maybe security researchers could look at known botnets or intrusions for clues to whether compromised networks aided anyone.
It does not seem implausible that supporters of a group that participates in rampant types of voter supression, gerrymandering, throwing away ballots, & sueing to prevent votes being counted would be afraid of lying to nosy strangers.
Could be a conspiracy, could be concern that being targeted if they are somehow identified as Trump supporters.
Most people have made up their mind ahead of time. An accurate information-gathering poll for an election should usually serve as an accurate forecast for that election.
30003 is SBS data? Don't change the ADSBx data port. FR24 feder client disables 30005 beast port to make it hard for people to feed other sites.

Install a separate decoder like readsb and drop that FR24 mind control. Then set FR24 craptastic client to read from the decoder if you insist on feeding FR24 ...
Sweep for Drug Reform Suggests Prohibition May Collapse Sooner Than Expected
It's kind of the same reason people will call something a "tape" when they mean a "audio/video recording". Or they "wire" you money. Or that welfare is paid with "food stamps" (it actually comes on a card now).

Certain legacy methods and technologies just carry on in the vernacular because it's easier to make analogies to them long after they become obsolete.
This is why I think having a ground game is absolutely critical for winning elections - it provides this feedback loop to campaign officials to be able to modify their strategy based on what actual voters are thinking about.

I've knocked on doors, and worked phones for various campaigns, and you learn a lot. The most important thing you learn, is that voters, and especially undecided voters are extremely ignorant (they are undecided for a reason) and are extremely susceptible to believe misinformation, or rumors. If you're not out there talking and debating with them, no one's going to knock them out of their bubble.

The Biden's campaign decision to not knock on doors, talk to voters, and get them registered just seems like a disastrous error to me. And yes, I know there's a pandemic going on, but there are safe ways to talk to people in person.
> Of course pollsters already know this, so they weight the samples to reflect underlying demographics

That doesn't actually help unless the difference in response rate is explained by the underlying demographics. If it is correlated with preferences on the issues polled even controlling for non-preference demographics, it's not going to be correctable by that means, nor is it going to be measurable so that it can be corrected.

OTOH, if it is a long-term consistent effect tied to partisan presidential voting preferences across election (and not, e.g., tied to the particular transitory trends, or evolving significantly over time) you could, as a poll-based forecaster, correct for the effect without measuring the correlation in preference and response rates by adjusting how you draw forecasts from polling data by correctingnbased on empirical election results and their relation to polls.
Why would I want one?
Can someone explain how this isn’t dis-information?
> Bitcoin simply isn’t that

Agree to disagree. I would say you're the one twisting the definition of "hard currency" (Wikipedia is not the source of all truth).

"Hard money" originally reffered to gold. When paper currency took over the term "hard currency" was used to distinguish between good and bad paper currencies.

I maintain that the "hard" part (which derives from gold) refers to the inability to be inflated easily. But I'm happy to concede that Bitcoin is not a currency yet in most peoples' eyes. I'm happy to switch to calling it a hard money.
Generally, preliminary numbers, yes.

Here’s a recording from 2019 elections in Canada. The last seat was determined 4 hours and 44 minutes later, and that is unusually delayed, but still a record time compared to U.S. counts: https://youtu.be/GYrY_945co0

Of course it might vary by population, but it shouldn’t need to be this inefficient to run or count advance votes, etc. Elections Canada might also make a difference rather than going state by state. And we don’t have a step after where votes are cast, etc., instead it’s a simple first past the post system.

Some background:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-votes-2019-election-...

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=faq&do...

As a Canadian I’d often watch as polls close in different time zones and then roughly a half hour later, results trickle in. Usually within the first two or three hours, up to half the country’s votes, by population (at least), have been counted and results shared — even as polls are still closing in other parts. It’s expected that by 2am at the latest you could usually know the outcome, even in a contested race. The exception would be minority governments, which can form their own majority from coalitions over the next few days after a Canadian election. And they do still count all the votes by hand in Canada.

This kind of vote count inefficiency reminds me of tax code inefficiencies. Just because taxes are complicated to file in the U.S. does not mean it has to be that way in the rest of the world! :)
In fairness, there's already clear evidence of attempts to subvert the election via manipulation of the USPS. It's not really an 'extraordinary' claim to suggest that Trump might attempt to manipulate the vote via other means - although I do agree that evidence is required to make the assertion.
After playing around with immediate mode GUIs in WebAssembly, I can envision a future which renders any kind of content blocker obsolete. The internet could be turned into cable television. I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, but it seems very plausible that this is the future we will eventually end up with.
An expert on voting machines explains how they work
For anyone interested, there’s a thorough politico interview with some California researchers pioneering exploration into this topic.
What is the chance of an earthquake? [pdf]
I currently share Dr. Atul Gawande's assessment. It jives with my personal (anecdotal) experience. I was in a pain and toxicity study, right during the major shift from under treating to over treating pain. And Gawande's criticism about the missing followup studies jives with my experience.

https://www.vox.com/2017/9/8/16270370/atul-gawande-opioid-we...

In my version of the story, Sacklers were opportunists who helped bury the evidence (a la Merchants of Doubt).
Seriously?! I never claimed it is junk science.. didn't even allude to it. I certainly wasn't casting doubt on research figures where they have been replicated and proven.

Truth is, some CBT studies have repeatedly passed replication and others yet have failed. CBT studies in lots of areas where it is used have shown relatively low efficacy, but close to alternative options. Even across anxiety disorders, where is it most effective, it is with an average-ish 70-80% success, and often only a few points different with alternative options. Meta studies have shown it to be ineffective within certain sub-cohorts, even in general areas where it is shown to be effective. Lots of CBT studies are performed differently or with different cohorts to how or with whom they are instituted in practice.

None of this means it is junk science, it just means you have to be very careful to understand the precise limitations of the science. You cannot separate the outcomes you like from the replication issue, you have to test it all. You also cannot generalise the very real successes of CBT across areas where they have not been shown to be effective, or shown to be ineffective. It is worth keeping these things in mind.

This information is almost never shown to clients. Clients are told 'CBT works', with the implication (or outright claim) that if it doesn't work for you it is your fault. It is popular with clients and it is popular with the profession, because it sets expectations early, it is cheap, it is targeted, and it works for the majority of people with the majority of issues people seek counselling for (ie. anxiety and depression). If this doesn't work for you, and this is all your counsellor offers, they are doing a massive disservice.
Httpy – Let's build a (nano) HTTP client
A large scale analysis of hundreds of in-memory cache clusters at Twitter
> This is why we had a “bird flu” or “pig flu”, and so on.

Delightful news, a case of H1N2 (swine flu) was reported in Canada today... 2020 ain't done yet
This is something I usually take care of by throttling the relevant event listeners (in an AJAXed site) but the way this article puts it makes me wonder if this is as easy as globally disabling double clicks on links and buttons:

document.addEventListener('dblclick', event => {
if (event.target.closest('a, input, button'))
event.preventDefault()
})
This, I wonder, is the issue. As far as I understand, when polling occurs you subsample a population and then extrapolate it based on the existing demographics of the polling area.

Infamously in 2016, the polls did not take into consideration or normalize for education level. This resulted in a oversampling for for Hillary supporters. So as we continue to see polarization due to personalized media, it may turn out that typical demographic markers are no longer as effective in normalizing these sample polls.
The importance of representative sampling is taught in undergraduate statistics courses.

Do you have any reason to believe that pollsters and other statisticians are so ignorant of their own field not to understand this?
I always laugh when someone who has never worked on a farm talks about buying one. Most farming is hard work, much harder than an office job. And most small farms do not make much money, especially if you don't know what you're doing.

If you're thinking about it go get a job on one first before you buy anything.
Are you sure? I think the title is misleading.
Right, but the original point was that Biden's lead was likely large enough in enough swing states to overcome a 2016-style polling bias, which looks like has occurred in some states. That's why it was a 10% chance for Trump, because he had to not just have a large polling error go his way, but also in enough swing states to total 270.

A landslide Biden victory was as probable as a narrow Biden victory. And both were more likely than a narrow Trump victory.
And now you know why I don’t use any Amazon products in this space.
Important to note: the option on their site labeled "computer" rather than "kit" has (AFAIK): no power adapter, no mouse, and no micro-to-regular HDMI cable. Also no included book.

Plenty of HN users probably have some or all of these things lying around, but it's important for people to know what they are (or aren't, in this case) buying.
Bulk raw wafers can be obtained for a couple cents in 120k quantities but the tooling to apply them is where the cost is mostly. Also Walmart is a huge customer but not the sole customer for the brands they stock so they'd have to convince a lot of different companies to include it to make it worth while.

I think the second is a big part of why RFID tags haven't taken hold, stores need enough of their stock to use them to be useful while manufacturers need enough clients to want the tags embedded to go through the trouble of including it in the packaging.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/NXP-Semiconductors/SL3S...
"Organic" farming still uses pesticides and herbicides, much worse outdated ones.
As someone who started programming in DOS, where binaries are usually much smaller, it's always annoyed me a bit that compilers and linkers don't seem to even make the slightest effort at not putting unnecessary bytes into their outputs, with things like:

Used for explicitly requesting that the stack is executable (note in the output above, this bit is not set)

...and 42(!) section headers in a binary definitely seems overkill; a normal Windows PE file has less than half a dozen.

Nonetheless, the ELF format can be trimmed down considerably:

https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.ht...
In some demographics they did that. They just fail to address what people actually care about, it is a chronic party-wide problem.

The parties never address or even acknowledge the criticisms about them. Choosing to instead imagine that everyone that doesn't believe what they do, already, actually believe the opposite. When people really just weigh different things and factor different things in, and aren't consciously thinking about whatever another person considers a trigger.

Critical error.

Blocking half of the people in the country and then being surprised that half the country didn't believe the same thing you did is not a productive use of energy.
If you aren't me then you should stick to Bogleheads Lazy Portfolios.
538 did a good article about this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-arent-...

The tl;dr is that there's more evidence against it than for it.

Polling errors are typically caused by unrepresentative polling - southern latino voters (one of the key shifts for Trump in Florida) in particular are hard to reach for polls, because there can be a language barrier.