There is no one process for identifying fraud, there are many processes as the elections are run by the States, not some, "central voting authority."
That being said, in California, specifically, it's analogous to dual-factor authentication.
On your ballot, you write your signature. You have ballot checkers who look at that signature, and check it against one already on file with the State Government, from sources like a voter registration application or driver's license.
So to make a claim that, "Fraud is high enough to make a difference," - let's say, 0.1% over those ballots not already rejected to be charitable, you would have to fake a percentage of 22 million votes (assuming rounding up to 10 million).
So keep in mind, 220,000 ballots were already rejected for not being able to be verified by the State. Beyond that, the 0.1% requirement would mean that 21,780 additional ballots within the remaining 21,780,000 ballots would need to be, "fraudulent," in order to make the election, "not valid," using a charitable definition.
What is the definition of fraudulent? It doesn't mean, "I don't like this person who voted," or, "voting with malicious intent." It means - the law was broken, creating illegal interference with the process of an election. Election fraud can take place around in-person voting and absentee/mail-in voting. It can occur at different points of the election process, from registration to the tallying of ballots. Types of election fraud include [ballot stuffing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud#Ballot_stuffin...), voter registration fraud, absentee/mail-in ballot vote fraud, and using fraudulent signatures.
To support the claim, "fraud is not extremely rare," you would have to demonstrate that 21,780 ballots were illegal, by either party mind you, through any combination of the above reasons. Or, you would have to at least define how many votes need to be illegal in order to mean, "not extremely rare," and then demonstrate a case for why we passed that threshold.
I have not read any convincing arguments on this entire thread demonstrating anything convincing even in the slightest, either evidence based or even just a semblance of a rational argument explaining why it might be true. All I read on here is hand waving ignorance and raw emotions.
On the other hand, what I see election authorities in California do, is A) Maintaining a list of possible registered voters or drivers licenses tied to addresses with signatures on file. B) Cross referencing those signatures on the ballots submitted. C) Allowing observers in to observe the process at any time.
(Attacking the person): This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone's argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument.
So there's a ~6:1 difference in rental price between the two, on the low end as listed online. Presumably there are even cheaper deals to be had which are not listed online. Food, labor, transportation and other expenses in Kenya are going to be similarly less expensive, perhaps by even greater multiples.
So no...outsourcing is definitely cheaper in the short run, and for simpler tasks.
I'm not going to tell you how to outsource or not outsource, and when it is and is not appropriate but labor can definitely be had for much cheaper than in the US. The US is now the richest country in the world per capita, more so than Luxembourg and the other traditionally richer countries because the USD is so strong.
Of course this will fluctuate over time, but that's the present status as we have this discussion.
"Yeah but outsourcing is dumb and people don't know how to code."
It's dumb? They don't know how to code? Could it be that some people don't know how to manage projects remotely and across cultures? Could it be that some projects can be outsourced while others can't?
> Here's an apartment in Nairobi that's $62.50 USD per month.
I should research this; I was told $800 for two bedrooms.
This one's $430 (1 bedroom). So I have no idea, but there's probably a massive range. Could be neighborhood, could be having security and power. I'm not sure.
Rent was cheaper for me in Beijing than in Seattle, but whenever I looked for anything that I would have rented in Seattle, the gap disappeared and even increased in Beijing. Yes, I paid less rent, but I lived at a much less standard as well.
There are other things to consider worn outsourcing: logistics are often more costly in the developing world than developed world, which can eat away at your savings pretty quickly.
Since so many comments on this thread are so absolutely negative, I will try to play devil's advocate here.
Is a given blockchain a more efficient database? Not efficient measured by percent of data stored in any given entry, which of course throughput and any other, "engineering metric," will suffer because of that. As an engineer, the idea of wasted energy, memory, space, etc., makes one cringe.
Efficient from the standpoint of preventing loss of human life or preventing sickness? Well, in the United States where likely most of us live, this is not as big of a problem, but likely in many other countries such as China, "food authenticity," is a problem. Let's keep in mind that Walmart has more stores and customers in China and more problems with food than the United States by orders of magnitude.
If I'm an actor within the food system in China which presumably has multiple middle-men, and I want to move one product up the supply chain through multiple, ultimately ending up on the shelves at Walmart, then I will not want to give away my source, because I want to get preferential pricing. However if I can convince my suppler upstream to use this tool (it doesn't matter if it's IBM, Google, Alibaba, or some startup or whatever, it's just a tech tool), to track and register when food was, "picked" or "harvested" then I don't have to give information to my buyer about the source, yet the database is all, "standardized," in terms of labeling. Keep in mind the alternative would be some kind of bar coding system which perhaps Walmart would have to impose. Well, I don't want my upstream partners knowing that this is going to Walmart either, otherwise they will jack up the pricing. If everyone is using some IBM tool, and assuming the IBM tool sees increasing adoption, then no one (hopefully) knows where or who a particular food is going to, yet any problem foods can be tracked back to their source by the end seller, without having to impose multiple types of key-value pair, bar-coding database systems, which - while technically easier to implement and run more smoothly from an engineering standpoint, perhaps do not take the entire use case into mind, because parties within the supply chain may be unwilling to share their source or destination due to pricing incentives.
Mind you, I am no food systems expert, I am just trying to talk hypotheticals here. I think the knee-jerk reaction on Hacker News within this thread is an almost Redditian "reaping karma" approach by putting down Blockchain, because many of us have had bad experiences working with corporate executives who have no idea how various types of technology work, and implementing non-technology buzzwords ends up being painful. That being said Blockchain at its heart, stripping away the history, is just a mathematical concept, and it's a math tool that can be used to point from one source to another. Calling it a, "mind disease," is losing sight of that.
Typically the types of discussions on hacker news that I enjoy reading are more angled toward how do you reverse engineer things, not just insulting an idea without backing up one's insult.
I really wish I could remember where I read this so I could give proper credit --
Somewhere I read a helpful way to rephrase "blockchain" that really helps cut to the heart of the issue when you're dealing with technical questions like this: A blockchain is just an ordered series of files, each of which contains a hash of the previous one in the series.
So, when you've got someone saying, "What if we use blockchain?", just mentally substitute the suggestion as, "What if we store the data as an ordered series of files, each of which contains a hash of the previous one in the series?" Any bits of the proposed system that aren't impacted by the decision to store the data as an ordered series of files, each of which contains a hash of the previous one in the series, also don't have anything to do with whether or not it needs to involve a blockchain.
(Yes, I realize there are additional questions around trust and proof of work and whatnot that come into play when you're talking about blockchain-as-in-cryptocurrency, but, as far as I can tell, it's a rare case that proposed use cases for blockchain in business are ones where anyone even wants trustlessness. See, for example, Walmart trying to use a centralized blockchain to manage their edible leaf supply chain.)
But it's also the defining characteristic - it's the essential thing that sets blockchains apart from all the many other ways you could create an append-only register that can be used by multiple parties.
The fact that the hash is both an implementation detail and the defining characteristic is exactly why, IMO, "blockchain" is an inappropriate word to use in most business plans. Implementation details as a headline feature of your elevator pitch is a classic characteristic of a solution in search of a problem.
As far as I'm aware, nobody was talking about peer-to-peer supply chain management before "blockchain" became a buzzword. Probably because you don't need peer-to-peer when you have a natural central authority. The organization whose supply chain it is in the first place, for example.
Supply chains aren't really owned by a single entity, right? Walmart may be the biggest actor and driver of requirements but they don't own anything beyond the specific services they are paying for. Its a complicated system of actors - which is where something like a DLT or blockchain can help bring together in a more cohesive way.
The problem is that we've mostly exhausted technical discussions surrounding the blockchain. Everybody who cares about them (on either side of the fence) know how they work and what they do and don't do. But that's not even the point anymore.
>That being said Blockchain at its heart, stripping away the history, is just a mathematical concept, and it's a math tool that can be used to point from one source to another.
Not anymore. Look at this thread, not everybody seems to agree about what a "blockchain" is. Is it a blockchain without PoW? Is it a blockchain if it's fully centralized? The word is so generic to begin with that people can overload it with whatever they want, like "cloud computing" and all these other buzzwords.
This is not a technical discussion because we're well past that point. This is not about technology, this is about marketing and banking on the hype. Cryptocurrency proponents are happy because it can be used to boast wider adoption, crypto haters (like me) dislike it for exactly the same reason.
> Is a given blockchain a more efficient database?
One property of a database that may not exist on blockchain is deletion of records. You can not delete "records" on blockchain due to its immutable property.
Though, for the sake of argument, even in SQL databases people are increasingly moving toward append-only tables where you never physically update or delete existing records, you just insert a new one that supersedes the old one. The same approach would work for a blockchain.
If it's not intended to be a decentralized system in the first place, the "blockchain" aspect is useless and turns from being a clever hack that allows to generate a certain level of trust from distributed participants, thus enabling the decentralization in the first place, to a marketing ploy that, if not just being lip-service but actually implemented, is a huge resource hog and severely reduces scalability and maintainability of the system without offering any benefits whatsoever.
Because of this situation it is natural to assume that a blockchain-based system must either have a decentralization aspect to it, or that the architects of the system are incompetent. And we don't want to assume there's such gross incompetence at IBM, do we? ;-)
What if the biggest feature about using the blockchain isn't that it's an open ledger that resists tampering from untrustworthy agents but that it has lots of hype?
Blockchain is a decentralised way to create trusted record without a trusted counterparty, i.e. centralised.
In this case, there is nothing decentralised, you need to go through IBM as with a regular system. Blockchain is only mentioned as marketing to convince you they are reliable. A bit how some hosting service tell you their are using S3 to convince you they are not going to lose your data.
edit: The problem is the title of the article that let you imagine there is some interesting blockchain tech being developed. Instead that's about as interesting as "Walmart uses SAP"
Spectrum fallacy. There is no "scale of morality," which goes from 0 to 10. Each of these can be viewed as wrong from different perspectives. Also, "exploit labor," is a leading term - there is labor exploitation going on, but also free association, while at the same time there are companies that engage in almost outright slavery. It's all over the place and you can't loop them together. If you give a 6 year old poison candy, it's clearly indefensible. If it's a 20 year old, "kid" well, most people will think that's his or her choice.
So your argument is, "Self-interested entity A wants to gain something, therefore they should take it."
There is absolutely zero substance to what you are saying. You are basically saying, "the strong survive! Yay on strong! Boo on weak!"
That is the basis of what you are saying. Then you back it up by saying, "This is the way it has always been done! Timmy jumped off a bridge too, so I should do it!" Did you know that it is completely possible that other Governments are doing things wrong as well?
Haha if you really loved discussion one would wonder why you chose this particular comment as the only one of a dozen mostly more substantive comments to which you would respond after three hours...
On HN, please don't use quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not. That's a flamewar trope, and usually a marker of unsubstantiveness.
Zero substance? The point is that these are experts in their niche of law. That is a highly sought after skill. What is your argument that these people should not be able to use their knowledge of the law? Are they automatically corrupt or something?
They are not automatically corrupt, but they are absolutely and automatically worthy of suspicion of corruption, as doing this revolving door thing is indistinguishable from corruption on the surface.
Experts who aren't the authors are the only ones who can safely be assumed not to be corrupt and are therefore the only people who you can allow to be hired if you hope to prevent corruption.
I think we need to separate elected power and knowledge.
If you're taking goods, services, favours, even future employment, as a politician (or for your friends, family), you're corrupt.
If you're hiring a politician after they've left office to buy their influence (they do know people) or their oratory skill, or —as I started this— what they know about the law, I think that's fair game.
If you try to clamp down on the latter, nobody with any existing influence or industry (or F&F with same) will want anything to do with that area of government. I would rather have slightly corrupt but competent politicians than pure-hearted idiots.
Just to remember, there are shades of grey. A senator may have financial interest in the biggest industry in their state, but pushing for laws that further that industry isn't necessarily corrupt.
The only way you sort this out is getting rid of the middle-man and holding referendums on everything. And even that is vulnerable to corrupt influence.
I'm skeptical there is a shortage of competent people to necessitate hiring idiots because you can't hire those with potential conflicts of interest. Finding and recruiting (and in some cases possibly grooming) competent people is hard, which makes it seem like they're extremely rare if you don't have success at it, but that's a different issue.
Corruption is a huge problem with huge costs to society, however hard they are to quantify. It's like a cancer that grows exponentially and kills institutions, and the fallout is messy and difficult. So while everything you said has some sense behind it, I don't believe the cost of eliminating those potential conflicts of interest (which I see as small) approaches the value of reduced corruption (which I see as large.)
Nads, missed the edit deadline. I meant to say "the promise of future employment". I think just being employed for having written some law is okay, as long as there was no arrangement, or understanding that they'd be employed because they wrote that law.
It's tricky stuff to detect and enforce but it seems to infringe considerable freedoms to lock it down too.
The story of Henrietta Lacks has less to do with whether the acts were deliberately malicious and more about medical researchers, and humanity as a whole, coming to a realization that patient consent is a fundamental ethic, whereas going back to ancient Greek times, doctors would deliberately mislead patients about their condition because it was thought to be, "within their best interests," and because, "doctor knows best." Nazi medical experimentation where human beings were treated like animals in the holocaust was being brought to light around this same time in history, and in the subsequent decades the entire practice of patient consent was changed - it was the biggest thing since the Hippocratic oath.
Framing the conversation into the typical American oppression zeitgeist is ignoring the fact that Henrietta played a role
in changing how humans looked at this ethical conundrum, period. This change in thinking will last forever, whereas America will not, just like the Ancient Greek civilization did not last forever, but much of the thinking and discovery influenced the rest of history (such as the Hippocratic oath). She allowed her cells to be used - she choose to be trusting to the doctors who were treating her, having no idea whether she would be OK or not, having no idea what would happen in the future, and then the doctors turned around and shared her cells for free with thousands of other doctors because they saw it as a medical miracle. This has subsequently been discovered, from an ethical sense, to be totally immoral, regardless of the good intentions of the doctors, whereas previously it was considered a moral imperative. Her decision and role in this part of history didn't "remind us to think about ethics," it completely changed how this area of ethics are even thought about, and that will be a benefit to anyone who ever visits a doctor or has any medical problem, ever, which is pretty much 100% of everyone.
Plausibly be trusted in what context? In a court of law? Or in the court of public opinion?
I think the general hypothesis among mass communication studies doctorates is that as soon as a technology is created and adopted by a mass audience, there are immediate examples of humans immediately using it to manipulate public opinion in some way. For example, as soon as telegrams became a thing used to manipulate public opinion (like the Zimmerman telegram), fake telegrams became a thing. As soon as online video became a thing, fake online videos became a thing (like Lonleygirl15).
Isn't what you are really saying is, "humans like to create fake things, and then a lot of people fall for those fake things." Right? Why should we buckle up for that? Isn't it already a foregone conclusion?
Google and people deep in Silicon Valley do not have the capability to judge whether they are seen as evil because evilness is a matter of taste and ideology. Of course no one sees themselves as evil - that is never the question. The question is, "do others see us as evil?"
One perspective is that monopolies are not inherently evil, because 1) It's a matter of perspective - what is Google a Monopoly in - advertising? Or web search? They may be completely dominant in web search, but they are a tiny player in web advertising in the grand scheme of things, which is interesting because that is their main business. 2) Monopolies are regularly supplanted by new monopolies, and provide stable financial ground upon which other "hard innovation," can happen, as with AT&T in the 50s and IBM in the 70s.
Of course, if you are someone like Theodore Rosevelt, then you would say, "trusts, a form of monopoly, are horrible, and more competition increases the amount of innovation, so therefore Google must be broken up." However if you are a Peter Thiel type ideological person, then you might say, "Yeah well, times change and monopolies will provide a huge amount of value for the time that they exist, and then they will inevitably die out, like Sears."
So, the conversation people are having around the world today, regardless of what is being talked about in Silicon Valley...is - has Silicon Valley (as a construct, rather than a physical place) created a feudalistic system, and should we create legislation to take that power and money away from them? Silicon Valley, similar to Wall Street (also a construct, not a physical place), will either innovate a way to maintain that power and convince the rest of the world that they are "not evil," or change the conversation in some way, or politics will keep moving in the direction where they eventually break up all the huge tech companies.
You can scream and say, "hey, we're not evil!" all you want - I'm not sure whether that communication strategy will work or not. Post 2008 folks on Wall Street seemed to have embraced the fact that they were perceived as evil and that they monopolize banking, and it seems that their power has been curtailed very little. I could see Mark Zuckerberg and all the tech execs coming out with a unified message saying, "yeah, online data isn't about us, it's about supporting millions of other small businesses, so an attack on cookies and pixels is an attack on freedom," - a similar tack that Wallstreet takes, and I could see people going forward in believing in that. Regardless of whether spying on people is actually evil, they could create some argument that it's a necessary evil, and therefore is not evil, and get anyone who might oppose them politically on their side, and hence we will continue forward in the United States having a completely separate legislative philosophy around data than Europe.
It's interesting you bring up Thiel with regards to Google. I haven't ever seen anyone so willing to slam their top leadership directly and on television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ&t=35s
It's not clear at all that Google will be safer from anti-trust investigation now that Thiel has political influence either:
> “Peter has indicated that if he takes the P.I.A.B. position he intends to take a comprehensive look at the U.S. intelligence community’s information-technology architecture. He is super-concerned about Amazon and Google”—and Facebook, less so. “He feels they have become New Age global fascists in terms of how they’re controlling the media, how they’re controlling information flows to the public, even how they’re purging people from think tanks. He’s concerned about the monopolistic tendencies of [all three] companies and how they deny economic well-being to people they disagree with.” When I asked this source how likely it is that Thiel will assume the post, he answered, “He’s heavily leaning toward it. He feels there’s a lot of good he can do and it’s worth putting up with all the bullshit and scrutiny that will accompany his appointment.”
That being said, in California, specifically, it's analogous to dual-factor authentication.
On your ballot, you write your signature. You have ballot checkers who look at that signature, and check it against one already on file with the State Government, from sources like a voter registration application or driver's license.
So to make a claim that, "Fraud is high enough to make a difference," - let's say, 0.1% over those ballots not already rejected to be charitable, you would have to fake a percentage of 22 million votes (assuming rounding up to 10 million).
So keep in mind, 220,000 ballots were already rejected for not being able to be verified by the State. Beyond that, the 0.1% requirement would mean that 21,780 additional ballots within the remaining 21,780,000 ballots would need to be, "fraudulent," in order to make the election, "not valid," using a charitable definition.
What is the definition of fraudulent? It doesn't mean, "I don't like this person who voted," or, "voting with malicious intent." It means - the law was broken, creating illegal interference with the process of an election. Election fraud can take place around in-person voting and absentee/mail-in voting. It can occur at different points of the election process, from registration to the tallying of ballots. Types of election fraud include [ballot stuffing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud#Ballot_stuffin...), voter registration fraud, absentee/mail-in ballot vote fraud, and using fraudulent signatures.
To support the claim, "fraud is not extremely rare," you would have to demonstrate that 21,780 ballots were illegal, by either party mind you, through any combination of the above reasons. Or, you would have to at least define how many votes need to be illegal in order to mean, "not extremely rare," and then demonstrate a case for why we passed that threshold.
I have not read any convincing arguments on this entire thread demonstrating anything convincing even in the slightest, either evidence based or even just a semblance of a rational argument explaining why it might be true. All I read on here is hand waving ignorance and raw emotions.
On the other hand, what I see election authorities in California do, is A) Maintaining a list of possible registered voters or drivers licenses tied to addresses with signatures on file. B) Cross referencing those signatures on the ballots submitted. C) Allowing observers in to observe the process at any time.