The criticisms of these polls is broadly correct. But I’m not sure I agree with the conclusion.

Nate Silver was bitterly attacked for weeks before the 2016 election for giving Trump a 20% chance of winning when most other (mainstream) pundits were giving him ~1%. It was bizarre to watch; they might as well have straight up told people not to bother voting.

It was Dem complacency that lost that election and thinkpieces like this do little but encourage more complacency. Trump fans will turn out. Biden-haters will turn out. People who would otherwise be holding their nose and voting for Biden will only turn out if they believe it matters. As they would have in 2016 if they’d known Trump had a realistic chance of winning.

Dems should be thanking biased Republican pollsters because Biden will only win this if a big chunk of eligible voters realise that they’re going to have to hold their nose and vote for him.

Jewish fascism, not Nazism.

Nazism is, in part, defined by its anti-semitism and, while many of Israel’s supporters are anti-semitic (notably Christian Zionists but also those who insist that ‘real’ Jews support Israel regardless) it’s just not appropriate to identify Nazism as the form of fascism practiced by Israel. It is authoritarian and supremacist but it is not specifically Nazi.

Ur-Fascism is a good read.

Executives likely to use such a device aren’t using public transit.

Yes they are. Probably not in the country that calls it transit, mind. And lots of people would like to be able to have more private conversations in public, whether or not they’re travelling at the time.

Plus, I’ve seen a lot of threads over the years from gamers, or the people who have to live with them, looking for something exactly like this.

They vote for nobody. Electoral turnout in the UK plummeted from 1997 on.

Low turnout is a feature (not a bug) of neoliberalism.

Install HP Smart without permission.

I checked when I saw this story a few days ago, and there it was. I uninstalled it. Today it asked for permission to install itself again. I suppose at least this time it asked and could be refused.

Stochastic terrorism is spreading hatred and fear that is likely to make someone, somewhere, commit a violent act against the targets (or individuals within the targeted demographic). In this case, specific eBay employees were told to target this specific couple to shut them up. I don’t know how precise the instructions were but the targets, and the people told to target them, were not random.

The fact that there was invisibilised third party access to the accounts used as the basis for prosecutions is important in and of itself. But I’m not seeing much about the underlying reasons for it.

Fujitsu knew that Horizon didn’t work properly before it was rolled out to the Post Office. They were told by their own engineers that parts of it had to be rewitten because they were so shoddy. They chose, instead, to have a team of people correcting errors in the background, without disclosing this to subpostmasters or, apparently, the Post Office.

The concern is not that Fujitsu’s trouble-shooters might be deliberately falsifying accounts, there is no obvious motive for them to do so. But it does make it clear that the ramshackle system did not work properly, that Fujitsu knew that it did not work properly, and that the only errors which could be corrected were the ones that got picked up centrally, with the process for correcting them creating the potential for more human error.

Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider

There’s an interesting report on the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance site also: Origins of a disaster (and long form version).

It is well-documented that the Post Office’s Legacy Horizon was a reconfigured version of a disastrously flawed parent project, the Benefits Payment Card. The impression given by three Secretaries of State to a Parliamentary Select Committee in July 1999 was that, once the BPC was thought to be irredeemably faulty by autumn 1998, all efforts were then focused on the reconfiguration into the Horizon project as we know it. But their evidence was far from complete. In late 1998 the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who had been warned of the system’s instability, was asked to decide the future of Horizon. The No.10 Policy Unit had advised on cancelling the BPC and the Law Officers had given a clear view on how the public sector might terminate the project. Blair’s steer, however, paid no heed.

Many extremely well-paid heads need to roll.

Thank you! Surprised the report didn’t mention that (I was too lazy to do a search).

If he were said to be omnipotent, this would be an interesting conundrum. But he isn’t so it doesn’t really work?

The subhead misses out the worst stuff. How on earth?

Criminal charges still in the works, I would hope.

“Secretly”

I used to live round the corner from a strange little place that sold cassette tapes (what we used for music and sometimes even data before CDs, for those too young to know). Everyone was convinced it was a front but it turned out it was a world famous tape supplier. Just happened to be based in my quiet little back street.

The newsagents next door to my last place have to have been a front though. Shelves were half bare, only ever stocked with stuff that doesn’t go off. Always two or three guys hanging out in the back room, looking slightly surprised if you wanted to buy something. Cash only, no cards (not that unusual round here but they usually have a minimum purchase rather than just no card machine at all these days).

They were absolute sweethearts. Took loads of deliveries for us, always really nice about it. And that’s more evidence that it’s a front. Proper criminals are the best neighbours anyone could ask for because the last thing they want is complaints bringing the police to their door.

We’re in the middle of a global fascist spasm. If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it’s not happening, I think Threads is trying to be that place.

Most people have more than the average number of legs.

It’s an actual thing. When it feels more like you have a teenage son than a partner it’s hard to get turned on by them, even if you weren’t already too exhausted from clearing up after them.