2020 Election Results

[bilby]

Because if we made them totally automated as bilby recommends for driving systems we'd not ever be able to actually register our vote.

I don't think we actually want that.

I suspect there are plenty of powerful people in the US who would very much want machines to vote for them without the annoying interference of any actual humans.

 

[Swammerdami]

Comparing voting machines with self-driving cars? To make comparison meaningful, we should focus on how easy it is to hack the cars so that they attempt to kill pedestrians, especially those with a certain skin color.

One of the two major U.S. political parties has made quite clear that cheating at elections is their single highest priority. This is all pro-democracy people should focus on in U.S. voting procedures. There are lots of 'Net articles about ways to hack voting machines, and suspicions that it's already been done. No links: The articles make me frightened and angry.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, as a professional driver I am confident that current automation systems would be safer than me - they don't get tired, they're less likely to concentrate on a major hazard to the exclusion of minor or emerging hazards, and they're able to "see" better in almost every way, and even communicate far more effectively with other vehicles.

The problems with them are those we always see in beta software - not catastrophic failures, but failures that are nevertheless unacceptable to the users. Your car won't run down a pedestrian, but it might decide to only go at 5mph on an empty road, or not to budge at all, because it's overestimated the significance of an input, or is overwhelmed, or has suffered a software specific issue like a memory leak.

Disagree. We have seen multiple crashes where Teslas failed to note the utterly obvious.

In fact, one of the biggest hurdles to autonomous vehicles taking my job is that they refuse to fudge the rules. There are places that I need to exit via an 'entry only' driveway, for example, because the lot was designed for car sized vehicles, and doesn't have sufficient clearance or turning space for a large truck. This stuff probably needs a solution in parking lot design rather than autonomous vehicle software (simply a sign under 'No Exit' that reads 'Vehicles over 3.8m high excepted' might suffice).

Yup. They not only don't know how to fudge when needed but are weak at understanding that others on the road might do wrong things.

We had (no idea if it still exists) a level 4 passenger bus operating here. Short range, low speed, just drives around a pre-programmed loop. Mere hours after it started there was an accident a human driver would have avoided--someone backed into the bus from the side. A human would have seen the problem coming and gotten out of the way, the robot brain just sat there.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Comparing voting machines with self-driving cars? To make comparison meaningful, we should focus on how easy it is to hack the cars so that they attempt to kill pedestrians, especially those with a certain skin color.

One of the two major U.S. political parties has made quite clear that cheating at elections is their single highest priority. This is all pro-democracy people should focus on in U.S. voting procedures. There are lots of 'Net articles about ways to hack voting machines, and suspicions that it's already been done. No links: The articles make me frightened and angry.

What I would like to see for voting machines is anyone can buy a machine, sign an NDA and get the full design and source code so they can engage in white-box hacking of it. The company has to pay them a substantial amount if they find an exploitable breach. The state of software engineering in most embedded systems is abysmal.

 

[Swammerdami]

Comparing voting machines with self-driving cars? To make comparison meaningful, we should focus on how easy it is to hack the cars so that they attempt to kill pedestrians, especially those with a certain skin color.

One of the two major U.S. political parties has made quite clear that cheating at elections is their single highest priority. This is all pro-democracy people should focus on in U.S. voting procedures. There are lots of 'Net articles about ways to hack voting machines, and suspicions that it's already been done. No links: The articles make me frightened and angry.

What I would like to see for voting machines is anyone can buy a machine, sign an NDA and get the full design and source code so they can engage in white-box hacking of it. The company has to pay them a substantial amount if they find an exploitable breach. The state of software engineering in most embedded systems is abysmal.

Yes. But even better in the near- to middle-term would be to outlaw anything but retained paper ballots. Any added expense would be immaterial; what I'd wish to see less of is obvious cheating.

Recall the big race that D's won by a single vote, and the GOP vote-looker called in the next day saying she'd misjudged one ballot! Was that the same race that, when tied, led to the whatever, wherein lots were supposedly drawn by the (some Virginia or NoCarol County's?) government-appointed election chair) ? Did any of you see that drawing in video?

 

[Ford]

Yeah, as a professional driver I am confident that current automation systems would be safer than me - they don't get tired, they're less likely to concentrate on a major hazard to the exclusion of minor or emerging hazards, and they're able to "see" better in almost every way, and even communicate far more effectively with other vehicles.

The problems with them are those we always see in beta software - not catastrophic failures, but failures that are nevertheless unacceptable to the users. Your car won't run down a pedestrian, but it might decide to only go at 5mph on an empty road, or not to budge at all, because it's overestimated the significance of an input, or is overwhelmed, or has suffered a software specific issue like a memory leak.

Disagree. We have seen multiple crashes where Teslas failed to note the utterly obvious.

A Tesla is not an autonomous vehicle. They have driver assistance features, and some idiots in them who think "autopilot" means they don't have to pay attention, but they're not self-driving.

I can't speak to the abilities of this mystery bus you speak of, but to give you an idea of what's out there...a couple weeks ago we had a cat walk out in front of our vehicle at night while it was in autonomous mode. It "saw" the cat, stopped immediately, and waited until the startled feline wandered off before proceeding. In the month that I've been in the job, there's been exactly one accident in our entire fleet. It was minor, and happened when the vehicle was being driven manually.

And again, not an apt analogy to voting machines.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, as a professional driver I am confident that current automation systems would be safer than me - they don't get tired, they're less likely to concentrate on a major hazard to the exclusion of minor or emerging hazards, and they're able to "see" better in almost every way, and even communicate far more effectively with other vehicles.

The problems with them are those we always see in beta software - not catastrophic failures, but failures that are nevertheless unacceptable to the users. Your car won't run down a pedestrian, but it might decide to only go at 5mph on an empty road, or not to budge at all, because it's overestimated the significance of an input, or is overwhelmed, or has suffered a software specific issue like a memory leak.

Disagree. We have seen multiple crashes where Teslas failed to note the utterly obvious.

You failed to note the utterly obvious fact that there are no autonomous Teslas in private ownership. As I mentioned above.

A Tesla isn't an autonomous vehicle.

In fact, one of the biggest hurdles to autonomous vehicles taking my job is that they refuse to fudge the rules. There are places that I need to exit via an 'entry only' driveway, for example, because the lot was designed for car sized vehicles, and doesn't have sufficient clearance or turning space for a large truck. This stuff probably needs a solution in parking lot design rather than autonomous vehicle software (simply a sign under 'No Exit' that reads 'Vehicles over 3.8m high excepted' might suffice).

Yup. They not only don't know how to fudge when needed but are weak at understanding that others on the road might do wrong things.

We had (no idea if it still exists) a level 4 passenger bus operating here. Short range, low speed, just drives around a pre-programmed loop. Mere hours after it started there was an accident a human driver would have avoided--someone backed into the bus from the side. A human would have seen the problem coming and gotten out of the way, the robot brain just sat there.

I would have just sat there too. If someone reverses into my stationary vehicle, that's their fuckup, not mine. And evasive manoeuvres are asking for trouble - they're an excellent way to turn a minor bingle that's not your fault into a major bingle that is.

I am going to guess you have never driven a heavy vehicle. Busses and trucks can't just 'nip' out of the way. And their drivers have very limited viability to the sides and rear. It's far from obvious from your description that a human bus driver could have avoided that crash - but replacing the moron who reversed into a large stationary object with a computer, on the other hand, probably would have completely avoided the problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You failed to note the utterly obvious fact that there are no autonomous Teslas in private ownership. As I mentioned above.

A Tesla isn't an autonomous vehicle.

In fact, one of the biggest hurdles to autonomous vehicles taking my job is that they refuse to fudge the rules. There are places that I need to exit via an 'entry only' driveway, for example, because the lot was designed for car sized vehicles, and doesn't have sufficient clearance or turning space for a large truck. This stuff probably needs a solution in parking lot design rather than autonomous vehicle software (simply a sign under 'No Exit' that reads 'Vehicles over 3.8m high excepted' might suffice).

Yup. They not only don't know how to fudge when needed but are weak at understanding that others on the road might do wrong things.

We had (no idea if it still exists) a level 4 passenger bus operating here. Short range, low speed, just drives around a pre-programmed loop. Mere hours after it started there was an accident a human driver would have avoided--someone backed into the bus from the side. A human would have seen the problem coming and gotten out of the way, the robot brain just sat there.

I would have just sat there too. If someone reverses into my stationary vehicle, that's their fuckup, not mine. And evasive manoeuvres are asking for trouble - they're an excellent way to turn a minor bingle that's not your fault into a major bingle that is.

I am going to guess you have never driven a heavy vehicle. Busses and trucks can't just 'nip' out of the way. And their drivers have very limited viability to the sides and rear. It's far from obvious from your description that a human bus driver could have avoided that crash - but replacing the moron who reversed into a large stationary object with a computer, on the other hand, probably would have completely avoided the problem.

A human would simply have rolled forward a bit--nothing was preventing it. It didn't need evasive maneuvers.

 

[scombrid]

We had (no idea if it still exists) a level 4 passenger bus operating here. Short range, low speed, just drives around a pre-programmed loop. Mere hours after it started there was an accident a human driver would have avoided--someone backed into the bus from the side. A human would have seen the problem coming and gotten out of the way, the robot brain just sat there.

That assumes that a human driver would have seen it coming and that the human driver would have responded appropriately and safely. Human driver could just as easily lurch into oncoming traffic trying to avoid the backing vehicle. One morning on my way to work I witness a near head-on collision because an oncoming car lost control on a two lane road, hit the opposite ditch, and careened spinning across the road in front of my path. A bee flew in her open window. Fortunately she didn't hit any oncoming traffic or immovable objects so there was massive trauma, just a demolished car.

 

[bilby]

You failed to note the utterly obvious fact that there are no autonomous Teslas in private ownership. As I mentioned above.

A Tesla isn't an autonomous vehicle.


I would have just sat there too. If someone reverses into my stationary vehicle, that's their fuckup, not mine. And evasive manoeuvres are asking for trouble - they're an excellent way to turn a minor bingle that's not your fault into a major bingle that is.

I am going to guess you have never driven a heavy vehicle. Busses and trucks can't just 'nip' out of the way. And their drivers have very limited viability to the sides and rear. It's far from obvious from your description that a human bus driver could have avoided that crash - but replacing the moron who reversed into a large stationary object with a computer, on the other hand, probably would have completely avoided the problem.

A human would simply have rolled forward a bit--nothing was preventing it. It didn't need evasive maneuvers.

What, and killed the child that just stepped in front of your stationary vehicle, and was literally beneath your notice without your first doing the several seconds of checking that is routine when starting to move, to avoid exactly that scenario?

A human might well have. A professional heavy vehicle driver I would hope would not.

 

[Treedbear]

Experts or 'grifters'? Little-known firm runs Arizona audit

In early March, a Boston-based vote-counting firm called Clear Ballot Group sent a bid to Arizona's state Senate to audit the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County.

The firm has conducted more than 200 such audits over 13 years in business. “Our level of comparison data is unmatched,” Keir Holeman, a Clear Ballot Group vice president, wrote to the Republican-controlled Senate. He never heard back, he says.

Instead, the state Senate hired a small Florida-based cybersecurity firm known as Cyber Ninjas that had not placed a formal bid for the contract and had no experience with election audits. Senate President Karen Fann says she can't recall how she found the firm, but her critics believe one credential stood out: Cyber Ninjas' chief executive officer had tweeted support for conspiracy theories claiming Republican Donald Trump, and not Democrat Joe Biden, had won Maricopa County and Arizona.

At a public presentation last week, Logan cited as part of his qualifications that his firm “worked with some of the largest names in the financial services space.” Two of the companies he lists as former clients in his expert witness statement, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase, said through spokespeople that they have no record of hiring Cyber Ninjas.

 

[Ford]

Alternate reality by the numbers

How do Republicans view the election results?

According to the above Ispos/Reuters poll:

61% of Republicans strongly or somewhat agree that the 2020 election was "stolen" from Donald Trump.

56% of Republicans believe the outcome was "The result of illegal voting or election rigging."

54% of Republicans strongly or somewhat agree that the January 6th riot "was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad."

53% of Republicans believe that Donald Trump is the "true President" right now.


At the end of the day, an autonomous vehicle is only as good as the data you give it in order to operate. The car - while packed with an impressive amount of technology - is dependent upon humans to give it the best possible information. Accurate mapping. Extensive feedback from field testers such as myself. An ever-increasing amount of data gathered from troubleshooting. Constant updates to software and adjustments to hardware based upon real world experience. I spent hours tonight helping to troubleshoot a minor problem that kept the vehicle from operating autonomously. It is repetitive, sometimes frustrating work. Yet we all want the car to succeed. For me personally, I want this because a few years ago I got a front row seat to just how destructive an idiot driver can be. I want the AV to have all the best information, so that it can do it's job.

The Republican Party - as evidenced by their actions over the past year or so and since the election - want their voters to have bad data. They're maybe not hand-feeding them bad info, but they're not disabusing their voters of these notions either. What's really disturbing is that they know it's bad data. They know there was no "massive voter fraud." They know that January 6th wasn't caused by "Antifa." They know Trump lost.

Yet rather than sitting on the side of the road sending screen shots of the errors back to the engineers in an effort to figure out why the self-driving car wasn't able to engage in a mapped area, they're saying "welp...nothing to see here...take your hands off the wheel and don't worry about that upcoming four-way stop!"

We're all riding in that car, we're heading for a collision, and the GOP is doing nothing to stop us.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You failed to note the utterly obvious fact that there are no autonomous Teslas in private ownership. As I mentioned above.

A Tesla isn't an autonomous vehicle.


I would have just sat there too. If someone reverses into my stationary vehicle, that's their fuckup, not mine. And evasive manoeuvres are asking for trouble - they're an excellent way to turn a minor bingle that's not your fault into a major bingle that is.

I am going to guess you have never driven a heavy vehicle. Busses and trucks can't just 'nip' out of the way. And their drivers have very limited viability to the sides and rear. It's far from obvious from your description that a human bus driver could have avoided that crash - but replacing the moron who reversed into a large stationary object with a computer, on the other hand, probably would have completely avoided the problem.

A human would simply have rolled forward a bit--nothing was preventing it. It didn't need evasive maneuvers.

If the bus was stationary, presumably it was stationary for a reason. It wasn't inside itself scratching lottery tickets. The only thing it should have done was emit a loud honk indicating a dumb ass was about to hit it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It just won't stop. In Stark County, Ohio (Canton), the Board of Elections wanted to buy 1,450 voting machines. Trump supporters messed their pants and the Republican led Stark County Commission tried to stop it.

“Whenever there exists a potential cloud (as acknowledged by the Dominion representative at the February 2, 2021 work session) or public perception or concern regarding a vendor’s long-term viability, regardless of the cause or reason, the County must take a vendor’s long-term viability into account,” they wrote. They also questioned the cost of the machines.

Stark County Election Board went to the state Supreme Court saying "This is BS!!!" (I'm paraphrasing).

Then of course people with links to Trump got involved too.

While local officials wait on tenterhooks for the state Supreme Court to decide their fate, the county board of elections has been smacked with a lawsuit by a group founded by, of course, former Trump campaign staffers.

“The process engaged in by the Board of Elections was not transparent and open to the public,” wrote Look Ahead America Executive Director Matt Braynard in a statement. “Right before voting on the contract with Dominion, the board excluded the public for eighteen minutes from their discussion and deliberations.”

The very conservative Ohio Supreme Court said yesterday, 'no you can't stop it, cut a check'. The decision was 6-1.

There was another lawsuit which is fighting based on technicalities. We've been saying the right-wing has lost it, and the evidence continues to pile on.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You failed to note the utterly obvious fact that there are no autonomous Teslas in private ownership. As I mentioned above.

A Tesla isn't an autonomous vehicle.


I would have just sat there too. If someone reverses into my stationary vehicle, that's their fuckup, not mine. And evasive manoeuvres are asking for trouble - they're an excellent way to turn a minor bingle that's not your fault into a major bingle that is.

I am going to guess you have never driven a heavy vehicle. Busses and trucks can't just 'nip' out of the way. And their drivers have very limited viability to the sides and rear. It's far from obvious from your description that a human bus driver could have avoided that crash - but replacing the moron who reversed into a large stationary object with a computer, on the other hand, probably would have completely avoided the problem.

A human would simply have rolled forward a bit--nothing was preventing it. It didn't need evasive maneuvers.

What, and killed the child that just stepped in front of your stationary vehicle, and was literally beneath your notice without your first doing the several seconds of checking that is routine when starting to move, to avoid exactly that scenario?

A human might well have. A professional heavy vehicle driver I would hope would not.

There was plenty of time to do it safely--this was a very low speed thing.

 

[bilby]

What, and killed the child that just stepped in front of your stationary vehicle, and was literally beneath your notice without your first doing the several seconds of checking that is routine when starting to move, to avoid exactly that scenario?

A human might well have. A professional heavy vehicle driver I would hope would not.

There was plenty of time to do it safely--this was a very low speed thing.

Then all the more reason to put 100% of the responsibility on the driver of the vehicle that was moving.

Unless he slowly reversed into an invisible bus?

 

[ZiprHead]

Tech company backs out of Arizona election audit

The tech company that oversaw the hand count of Maricopa County ballots in Arizona's Republican Senate-led audit of 2020 election results has decided to back out of the recount, audit officials said.

Audit spokesperson and former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen told the Arizona Republic Tuesday that Pennsylvania-based Wake TSI decided not to renew its contract, which ended May 14.

Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann (R) also told local NBC affiliate KPNX that Wake, which was the subcontractor working under the audit’s main contractor, Cyber Ninjas, would no longer be involved in the audit, which officials say is likely to continue through next month.

Pullen told the Republic that Wake TSI "didn't want to come back."

"They were done," he said, adding that Scottsdale-based technology company StratTech Solutions would now be overseeing the hand count.

Pullen said that Wake had been involved in the audit since it launched on April 23 and helped set up technology for the hand count of the more than 2.1 million ballots that state Senate Republicans obtained through a subpoena.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

They spent how much and the company is out?

 

[ideologyhunter]

If the 50s were the Conformist Era, the early 60s was Camelot, the mid-60s was The Great Society, the 80s was the Conservative Tsunami, the 90s was The Great Triangulation... I nominate the era initiated in 2016 as the FDR Years. D for Dumb and R for Republican.

 

[Gun Nut]

You failed to note the utterly obvious fact that there are no autonomous Teslas in private ownership. As I mentioned above.
A Tesla isn't an autonomous vehicle.

A Tesla is not an autonomous vehicle. They have driver assistance features, and some idiots in them who think "autopilot" means they don't have to pay attention, but they're not self-driving.

"A Tesla" is pretty much an autonomous vehicle. Presently, it will drive the speed limit on the highway, and on major roads. It will follow a vehicle in the lane in front of you at a set distance, up to a set speed. It will stay in your lane. It will avoid obstacles. It is not fully autonomous, and it does not work on every road.
The "Autopilot" feature has lifetime upgrade support and the intention is to provide full autonomous functionality through software update.
Tesla has priced the Autopilot feature such that it costs significantly more to purchase every year. It goes up thousands of dollars in price annually. This means that it makes just as much sense to buy a new Tesla than a used one, if you want autopilot, due to the offset in residual value of the used vehicle (their $8,000 autopilot now costs $20,000, keeping the total value of the car at par with new). Either one gets the latest and greatest version of autopilot.