

2012 Voting Machines Altering Votes - sergiotapia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpGd74DrBM

======
sergiotapia
In this day and age where things can be so easily (well, it's more feasible to
say the least) faked, how can people know if this is legitimate or not?

I'd love someone with more knowledge in this area to weigh in.

~~~
webXL
Reputation and details. The poster just joined youtube today. If this were
fraud, wouldn't you tell friends, and wouldn't one of those friends already
have a youtube account? Where was this? Why isn't that specific information
included?

------
ColinWright
Same video, very few comments or upvotes yet:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4748783>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4748736>

~~~
sergiotapia
HN should detect duplicates on submit.

~~~
ColinWright
They do when they're identical. Unfortunately, all these links are subtly
different.

    
    
        When someone says "I want a programming language
        in which I need only say what I wish done," give
        him a lollipop.
    
            -- Alan Perlis ACM-SIGPLAN '82,
               Epigrams in Programming
    

I invite you to suggest a solution to the problem of duplicated content.

~~~
evo_9
No something changed, I have seen several links I and others have submitted
from tech sites duplicated, they are 100% identical.

Example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749228>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749070>

Same exact title, same exact link.

~~~
ColinWright
I can't check, because one of them has been deleted, but I know that there are
rare occasions when this happens. I also know that most of the time when a
duplicate link is submitted it acts as an upvote on the existing item.

I also know that this doesn't work unless the earlier item is in the cache.

I _also_ know that the duplicate detection mechanism is currently working
because I just tripped it, so it's either more complicated than you think, or
I haven't understood you fully.

HN does (usually) detect exact duplicates, and your comment seems a bit
simplistic. The duplications of these videos about the voting machines are
_not_ identical URLs, and I haven't recently seen an example where the URL was
identical, and yet was not detected. As I say, your references can't be
checked because one has been deleted, but I have several times seen people
claim a duplicate was not detected, only the find that the URLs were not, in
fact, completely identical.

I am unconvinced that anything has changed.

~~~
evo_9
Here is another duplicate of the same story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749252>

Simplistic, but exact matches none-the-less.

~~~
ColinWright
Nope, not exact duplicates, because one has a trailing backslash, the other
doesn't. Sometimes that matters.

~~~
evo_9
Here are the resulting links to each of the three examples I showed:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/surface-disk-
space-a-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/surface-disk-space-a-bit-
better-and-a-bit-worse-than-microsoft-says/)

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/surface-disk-
space-a-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/surface-disk-space-a-bit-
better-and-a-bit-worse-than-microsoft-says/)

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/surface-disk-
space-a-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/surface-disk-space-a-bit-
better-and-a-bit-worse-than-microsoft-says/)

They are 100% identical, no?

~~~
ColinWright
They are as you quote them, and they are what they resolve to eventually, but
one of them at least is not the URL actually in the item.

This item: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749070>

Look closely at the URL as it's actually in the submission, not in the URL bar
after you click it. There is no trailing slash on the URL, so you are not
quoting the URL as it was submitting. That matters.

And when I say that it matters, it's possible that two URLs that differ only
in a trailing slash actually deliver different pages to you. For that reason,
URLs that differ in a trailing slash have to be considered different. Indeed,
URLs that are completely different sometimes end up delivering identical
content.

The DupDetector I wrote actually downloaded headers and titles, resolved URLs,
followed links, and generally tried to work out what would actually been
delivered. It was never production standard, and it's hard.

------
ColinWright
The largest discussion has ended up here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749574>

