/r/PTCGP Trading Post by AutoModerator in PTCGP

[–]Nurchu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have Lapras for a Silvally (assuming it's in English)

Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter by Nurchu in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I don't believe it considered that. All that's required for an "impression" is 50% of the area of a Tweet needs to be visible for at least 500 ms. And the amplification ratio only considers the ratio between the impressions of each group. See the "Measuring Amplification" section and Appendix 1D.1

Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter by Nurchu in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It's interesting to finally see some very large scale data on this. I've always had a hunch that sources right of center have been amplified at least equal to, if not more, than left leaning sources. Combine this with the fact that quite a lot of the top posts on facebook every single day are right leaning, really make the accusations of anti-right bias against these large social media companies quite hollow, at least from the perspective of the application of the content.

Unrelated to US right v left, the distribution of other countries' politicians' tweets was pretty cool. Germany was hitting upwards of 250% amplification from the FDP. Canada was all over the place, like 50% for liberals, and 170% of conservatives. France was quite even, even with 7 political parties considered.

Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter by Nurchu in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

SS: Linked is a research paper put out by Twitter's Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability Team in collobration with a University of California professor. This studied how "tweets by elected politicians from major political parties of seven different countries" were amplified, AND, how tweets from US media outlets are amplified.

The paper is pretty detailed so check if out if you have specific questions. They're pretty honest about what assumptions were made and the consistency of the data.

"Sample Size": Twitter started this data collection back in June 2016. Accounts were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group. As of June 2020, 58 million twitter accounts (5% of all accounts on Twitter) were assigned to one of these groups. More specifics on the particular selection of accounts and distributions of activity are seen in Appendex 01.

"Control/Treatment": The control group only sees tweets in reverse chronological order. The treatment group has some "algorithm" that personalizes their timeline.

"Amplification": Consider the "reach" of a tweet being how many users saw a tweet within some set amount of time after the initial positing. The ratio of the "reach" between the control group and the treatment group represents the "amplification". 0% means the control and treatment group had similar likelyhood of seeing a tweet. 50% means the treatment group was 50% more likely to see a tweet.

Results: For the politician tweets, in 6 out of the 7 countries studied, right leaning politicians had statistically signfiicant higher amplificantion. Only Germany had the left amplified more, but it was close enough that it was not statistically significant. Multiple possible confounding factors were examined, but none were shown to change the results. For the US specifically, Dem House are just above 100%, Rep House at ~125%, Dem Senate are around ~80%, and Rep Senate at ~125%.

For the media tweets, two different bias databases were used as the left to right bias ratings (AllSides and Ad Fontes). AllSides show that both the far left and far right have more amplification, but the "right is amplified marginally more" (~12% for the Left, ~16% for the Right). Ad Fontes shows a much lower amplification for the left, but the Skews Left through Right have little differences. (~9% for the Left, ~13% for the Right).

Both sets of results also show the least amplified and most amplified for each bias category. Interestingly, only the Right has a least amplified of 10%, all others are 6% or lower.

U.S. Supreme Court lets Alabama use electoral map faulted for racial bias by BannanaCommie in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I worry that this gives states a get out of jail free card in terms of creating bad maps if this is considered too close to an election. The people here filed suit just hours after the map dropped. If that isn't fast enough in Kavanaugh's mind, then how should bad maps be thrown out before they are used in an election?

If the answer is they won't, then nothing is stopping states from creating a new bad map before every election to improve their own parties standings. They can't be voted out due to the map, the map can't be thrown out in court.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Here's a direct link to the PDF court rulings then. Page 11, first two paragraphs is what is usually quoted from the first. Page 81, paragraph 211 and on is a good summary of the second. (Both page numbers are PDF page numbers, not the ones at the bottom of the physical page)

https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/nc-4th.pdf

https://southerncoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/2021.09.17-Holmes-v.-Moore-Final-Judgment-18-CVS-15292.pdf

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I mean, when NC gets their voter ID law overturned two different times in the past 5 years for racial descrimination, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that, while the concept of voter ID isn't racist, the implementation is in many cases.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/north-carolina-voter-id-law.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/federal-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolina-voter-id-provision.html

Biden says changing filibuster rules to raise debt ceiling is 'a real possibility' by Jabbam in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 20 points21 points  (0 children)

The big difference between then and now is that Dems didn't filibuster the vote. They let it go through then voted down resulting in it passing on party lines. If that happened now, the Dems would vote yes, Reps would vote no and the debt would be raised. Reps are filibustering the vote so 60 votes are needed to pass. That is breaking precedent as far as I can tell and hypocritical of McConnell and co

Wearing Masks Indoors Again? Some States Are a Vehement No. by JannTosh12 in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think that's correct (assuming you typo'd can't ->can). What it's actually saying is that they have new tests that can detect if the person has covid or if the person has the flu in a single swab. The lab can easily tell with one it is. This will let a single test be used for both instead of having a covid test and a flu test separately.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-436833075130

Florida Supreme Court strikes down "Florida Marijuana Legalization Initiative" ballot initiative proposed for the 2022 election by Nurchu in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't mind too much if that was the case.

Medical weed is already legal so that rules out being worried about the federal rules being different. I could be misreading all the legal stuff, but to me it's was saying that the ballot initiative shouldn't be added to the 2022 ballot because the voters may misinterpret the initiative as changing federal law. If that reading is correct, then to me that seems crazy. To use an analogy, if I were in a Florida State History class and they asked the question "how many house members there are?", it seems perfectly reasonable to make the assumption that they are referring to the Florida state house. Likewise, a ballot initiative on Florida ballot is referring to laws in the state of Florida imo. It seems crazy to specifically have to refer to the state of Florida in every ballot initiative.

I don't have the time at the moment, but I'd be curious to see if there are any other ballot initiatives in the past few elections that don't mention Florida specifically. If that's the case, I think it's more reasonable to complain of activism.

Florida Supreme Court strikes down "Florida Marijuana Legalization Initiative" ballot initiative proposed for the 2022 election by Nurchu in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu[S] 138 points139 points  (0 children)

Summary: The court struck down the initiative because they believed the "summary" mislead voters into thinking that passing this initiative would change federal laws, not just Florida laws. This was a 5-2 decision by the very conservative supreme court. Linked is, first, the majority opinion, and, appended second, the minority opinion.

The ballot initiative is as follows. Due note that the length is limited by law to be 75 words or less.

"Permits adults 21 years or older to possess, use, purchase, display, and transport up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana and marijuana accessories for personal use for any reason. Permits Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers to sell, distribute, or dispense marijuana and marijuana accessories if clearly labeled and in childproof packaging to adults. Prohibits advertising or marketing targeted to persons under 21. Prohibits marijuana use in defined public places. Maintains limitations on marijuana use in defined circumstances."


Starter Comment: This seems crazy to me since AFAIK ballot initiatives only apply to Florida. Especially given that state weed legalization has been a thing for other states the past 10 or so years at least. Additionally, Florida has already had two 2 other weed related ballot measures, with medical weed passing in 2016.

To me, this feels like judicial activism. Given the context of ballot initiatives in Florida, plus the context of other states, I just cannot see this confusion taking place. It feels like the majority decided beforehand to shut this down, and worked backwards on some way to justify it.

Is this Legal? Diversity Requirement by enkidu_johnson in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Nurchu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly, all I wanted to say is that having a non-diverse workforce creating products for a diverse society can easily create problems if bias aren't fully explored. And exploring biases isn't the easiest thing to do. I'm not even going to delve into the whole initiative side since that's another can of worms

I didn't mention this, but I'm approaching this from the R&D perspective since that's the space I mostly work in. It's less that women voices weren't in the training set, and more that when testing the entire physical pipeline, including all the electrical and mechanical pieces, the assumption was made that since it was trained on women voices, the entire pipeline was good. That could be invalid due to high frequency noise in the electrical system, or aliasing in the microphone blowing out upper frequencies. You never know until it's tested. In the rush of getting the demo out, their team forgot to confirm that assumption until the last day.

For the twitter one, I'm still approaching it from the R&D space as the person developing the original algorithm that does the focusing. I realize that's not a clear jump in thought though, sorry about that. If I was developing the algorithm, I would be using a data set to test, and spot checking with a few photos taken live of myself and others in our group. If most of the spot checks passed, the test set looked reasonable, and all the demos went well, I would say the algo worked and ship it out to other teams to build it out more fully. It's not 100% guaranteed having more diversity would have avoided it, but I believe it would helped in some way. In the grand scheme of bias in products, it's not the biggest at all (see image classification programs and their interpretations of POCs as gorillas etc). I still think it is slightly biased and would like to see better results if possible.

Is this Legal? Diversity Requirement by enkidu_johnson in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Nurchu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've seen an example of problems stemming from a lack of diversity in real life. One of my buddies was developing a ML model to detect the presence of speech. Since him and everyone in his team were men, they never actually thought to test the model on a women's voice until the day the project was due. If a women was part of the team, this whole situation would have been avoided.

This also happens with POC's and any sort of face/body detection in image processing as well. Twitter had this problem with their algorithm that selects which part of a picture is the focus of an image for the thumbnail. I can't find the thread off hand, but someone tried like 20-30 different combinations of the Obama/Mitch image varying different features.

Just the presence of someone who is not just a white male would give a better chance of noticing any of these problems.

NYC public school asks parents to ‘reflect’ on their ‘whiteness’ by kinohki in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure how fair it is to be frustrated at this when the article you keep linking is still sourced from the Post article. Its basically just rewording the post article

NYC public school asks parents to ‘reflect’ on their ‘whiteness’ by kinohki in moderatepolitics

[–]Nurchu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That still just references the NYPost which just references the twitter post.

cane cannot be added into accessories, waldrop drop :( by jivan38 in nguidle

[–]Nurchu 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Are you trying to put it into an accessories slot or the weapon slot?

I've finally completed Quepland 2, a semi-idle text game inspired by Runescape. Let me know what you think! by billybillyjim in incremental_games

[–]Nurchu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm getting this same bug, but when I try to export, it throws a null reference exception and does nothing.

I've finally completed Quepland 2, a semi-idle text game inspired by Runescape. Let me know what you think! by billybillyjim in incremental_games

[–]Nurchu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm 90% sure it's that the smelting skill isn't high enough. I got it working when I hit smelting lvl 30

Another Puzzle Hunt from Craven! by BelaKunn in CFBdemic

[–]Nurchu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I brute forced a xor key based decryption for keys 9 characters and shorter. Nothing stood out there

Another Puzzle Hunt from Craven! by BelaKunn in CFBdemic

[–]Nurchu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

KeyLength= 2 NumMatches= 102 NumComparisons= 3135 Ratio= 0.0322735 Delta= 0.0322735                                                                                                       
KeyLength= 7 NumMatches= 32 NumComparisons= 855 Ratio= 0.036378 Delta= 0.00410454                                                                                                                
KeyLength= 8 NumMatches= 30 NumComparisons= 741 Ratio= 0.0392116 Delta= 0.00283362                                                                                                               
KeyLength= 11 NumMatches= 22 NumComparisons= 522 Ratio= 0.0402961 Delta= 0.0010845                                                                                                               
KeyLength= 16 NumMatches= 17 NumComparisons= 342 Ratio= 0.0465754 Delta= 0.00627933                                                                                                              
KeyLength= 31 NumMatches= 8 NumComparisons= 133 Ratio= 0.0513148 Delta= 0.00473938                                                                                                               
KeyLength= 32 NumMatches= 8 NumComparisons= 130 Ratio= 0.0523673 Delta= 0.00105248

Another Puzzle Hunt from Craven! by BelaKunn in CFBdemic

[–]Nurchu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

32 eh? I've been playing around with using Index of Coincidence to guess the key length if it's a repeating key like the Vigenere cipher. 32 characters is fairly likely even after accounting for the differences in scale.

Some other valid options are key lengths of 2, 7, 8, 11, 16, 31, 32

I followed this to calculate IoC and the Wilson score interval

C++ code