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Not sure how accurate a source the New York times is, but it looks like it is indeed a fake news[^].
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Why would anyone release a contact tracing app that goes to sleep in the background?
Only in Alberta, Canada you say?
Pity.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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That's OK.
The UK one used an Excel spreadsheet to record positive test results ... an XLS file ... with a max of 64K rows ...
£35M that cost, apparently.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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The world runs on Excel spreadsheets.
No matter how complicated, finely crafted, or expensive the system is that's put in place, someone, somewhere falls back to managing it all on a spreadsheet.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Guilty!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I have read on occasion that here in America, both Democrat and Republican campaign strategists do most of their number crunching using spreadsheets. So yes, I agree completely with what you posted.
In fact, most people I know that crunch numbers for a living use spreadsheets extensively.
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I do as well - they are powerful and really flexible.
But ... once the data goes over a couple hundred rows, I move it to a DB and a C# app.
65K rows? Not nice, not at all.
Mind you, I used to work for someone who did all his stores, manufacturing, accounts, personnel - the whole damn company in fact - on a single sheet spreadsheet. It took about 20 minutes to load, and when it recalculated prices you went for a coffee. Worked for years though!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: 65K rows? Not nice, not at all.
agreed.
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I once wrote a cost analysis system for Hyundai that took 90 minutes to recalculate. I was disgusted with it as it only got within 1m of reality, the boss was ecstatic, he could only get within 10m using his system.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I don't think we know that for a fact - the press widely reported something along those lines, but...
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#realJSOP wrote: What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"?
The programmers responsible should be hanged, drawn, and quartered for their efforts, and especially for their "design". However, the accuracy problems are mitigated by the following:
- Assuming only one voting machine per precinct, the number of voters would have to pass 2^24 (16,777,216) before problems would start. Most (all?) precincts in the US aren't that large.
- Given (1), When calculating the results of local elections, or elections to the House of Representatives, the results will be accurate.
- The population of California, the largest State, may be represented using 26 bits, i.e. the result will be inaccurate in the last 2 bits. Given that there are ~50 counties, the chance that a vote will be lost at the county level is small (a candidate would have to get more than 2^24 votes, probably more than the total voter register of any single county). When summing the county totals for a State-wide vote (i.e. Gubernatorial, Federal Senate, or Presidential elections), it is possible that a candidate would lose (or gain) a few votes due to round-off. Assuming no State-wide election is decided by less than ~200 votes, any errors are immaterial.
#realJSOP wrote: Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
Isn't what's good enough for Tilt Cove, Newfoundland good enough for the entire USA?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Given that world population is much smaller than 264 (~1019), I would think that using a ulong (C#) or unsigned long long (C or C++) would be more than adequate.
Even assuming that human population doubles every 35 years, this still gives room for ~30-31 doublings, which will take ~1050-1085 years. In 3070 I expect to be safely retired.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Yeah but you're forgetting about the dead....they can vote too
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OK, so remove one doubling. I'll also be retired in 3035.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Knowing where the "revelations" come from: it is just another case of total b******t.
Yes: floating point may cause a slight difference or rounding error here or there but they pale into insignificance. Only total ignorance and the wish to peddle that to those who don't have a clue either is the reason behind spreading this.
Being a long time developer I know better, no way on earth do you lose "millions of votes" because of it, you only have yourself to thank for that.
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#realJSOP wrote: What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? It's not a good idea, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as you are implying. You would have to do far more testing than this simple program, and on the specific hardware of the machines, but on my machine it doesn't change the count by a single vote, even when using almost three times more people than there are in the US.
#include <iostream>
int main() {
__int64 test = 0;
double d = 0;
for (int i=0; i<16777216; ++i) {
d = d + 1;
}
std::cout << d << std::endl;
d = 0;
for (__int64 i=0; i<1000000000; ++i) {
d = d+1;
}
std::cout << d;
return 0;
}
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What about with single-precision?
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Change the double to float and try. And change the 10 billion to 16777215. Still no votes changed on my system.
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Python developers maybe?
However, I am reminded of when I was first learning to write programs in BASIC-PLUS on a PDP-11 in 1983, the book clearly states:
"floating point calculations are more accurate than integer calculations"
and
"integers have a range only from -32768% to +32767%"
We did everything in floating point and had no idea why anyone would ever use integers.
(OK, VAXBASIC uses 32-bit integers.)
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Come on John. As someone who writes code for a living, you know better than this.
It really doesn't matter the type when dealing with integers.
In a float, 1.0 + 1.0 still equals 2.0. Even accounting for representation inaccuracies, which you know always happens on the fractional side, how many votes would you have to count by adding 1.0 before you get anywhere near an integer misrepresentation by addition?
How great would the error really be? A couple of votes in either direction?
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For the floating voter of course!
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Ghost voters! We've had them in Chicago for quite a while now.
GHOST VOTERS RAISE SPECTER OF SHADY ELECTION - Chicago Tribune[^]
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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#realJSOP wrote: Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose?
No, you misunderstand, the software did perform its purpose. It was originally developed in Venezuela to help Hugo Chavez win "elections."
#realJSOP wrote: Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
Could the fact that Nancy Pelosi's husband has an ownership stake in the company have anything to do with it?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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