Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 275 posts

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#171

Post by pessimizer »

DFHippie wrote: post #83
matheusmoreira wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently the CIA pressured Brazil's president to accept the election results before they even happened. Even US media took issue with that.

Yes, you should say you will accept the results of an election before you know whether you will win it. This is the basis of the peaceful transfer of power. It shouldn't be hard to accept this. To accept only those elections you win is to deny the legitimacy of democratic governance altogether. If there is evidence the election wasn't fair, you should object. But your evidence that it was unfair shouldn't be your own…

> If there is evidence the election wasn't fair, you should object.

So saying that you will "accept the results of an election" is just a chant or a ritual that doesn't mean anything, because you can still declare the election was not fair after the results come in?

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#172

Post by LudwigNagasena »

godelski wrote: post #60
subsubzero wrote: post #9

Fun fact, many, many other foreign governments have "interfered" in our elections also. In addition the US has interfered in their elections as well. Its been happening for a very long time.

This comment comes off as malinformation. Malinformation isn't information that is incorrect, but correct information used in a way to create a misleading context. There's 2 problems here. 1) You're implicitly dismissive of a foreign government interfering in our elections. I think most of us here will agree that any interference from any entity is not okay. 2) It muddles the conversation with more noise. A more in d…

> Malinformation

Thanks for a new word for my 1984 dictionary.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#173

Post by MichaelCollins »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #43
MichaelCollins wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still betting on a premature death, but never say never. Castro retired.

> I'm still betting on a premature death Mr Putin is 70 years old, and reports of his health issues are circulating. So I think that it's too late for "premature" death.

I'm talking about homicide. An assassination or summary execution, like Ceaușescu.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#174

Post by matheusmoreira »

divided wrote: post #166
matheusmoreira wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/05/cia-director-b... CIA person "urging" a president of a soverign country to stop doubting voting machines? Calling his doubts "baseless"? I mean, the USA has paper ballots to this day because of the exact same "baseless" doubts. It's essentially world wide consensus that voting machines are a bad idea, some countries straight up declared them unconstitutional. But these US…

If Brazil is anything like the US, there are many, many safeguards in place whenever an election machine is certified and used. Baseless means without evidence. So when a politician is yelling at his fans that the machines overturned the results of the election, and no one has found evidence of it, you should doubt those claims. In other words, through certification and audits there is a lot more evidence the machine…

> So when a politician is yelling at his fans that the machines overturned the results of the election

This isn't what he was doing though. He wanted the voting machines to have a printer function so that an auditable paper trail was established. I've seen highly voted comments arguing for this exact same thing here on HN not even a week ago.

> and no one has found evidence of it, you should doubt those claims

I did doubt those claims. At first.

Some serious evidence has surfaced though: discrepancies in the election data set showing older less thoroughly audited voting machines clearly favoring the winning candidate by as much as 15%.

I was still skeptical, tried to reproduce the results on my own dataset... Then I watched the government's election website go down for hours, then come back up with the data set modified. Then I watched a supreme court judge censor anyone asking questions about this on Twitter.

It's not exactly inspiring confidence.

> In other words, through certification and audits there is a lot more evidence the machines worked properly than the feelings you are using for making your decisions.

The 2020 voting machine models seem to have been thoroughly audited. However, we're still using older models and I don't think they were audited recently. There were discrepancies in the voting patterns of the 2020 model and older models and nobody has been able to refute that at this time.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#175

Post by pessimizer »

lucretian wrote: post #46
NDizzle wrote: post #38

$100k in Facebook ads, in 2016. Soros has donated $126M for midterms tomorrow. [1] But, you know, mean tweets, Putin's puppet, etc, etc. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/us/politics/midterm-money...

Soros is an American citizen. Thanks to a conservative SCOTUS decision, he apparently has every right to exercise political free speech via cold hard cash. Are you going to say anything similarly conspiratorial about Robert Mercer? Robert Uihlein? The Koch brothers?

> Are you going to say anything similarly conspiratorial about Robert Mercer? Robert Uihlein? The Koch brothers?

I'm going to say that if these creeps donate millions and billions to Republican campaigns, cycle after cycle, with no effective objections from the court or Congress, that "foreign interference" is a nationalist dogwhistle and not a serious concern.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#176

Post by [deleted] »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #76
danenania wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why everyone assumes this. It seems like he'd have much more ability to shape the future of Russia and protect those close to him if he chooses a successor and oversees the succession. He could also ensure better conditions for himself (i.e. not being executed) in case he ends up being unable to continue ruling due to sickness/old age.

Do we have any examples of this actually happening in the Soviet times until now? He's going to be worried about the groomed successor doing him in earlier than natural death. That paranoia is what keeps them from doing what you suggest.

[deleted]

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#177

Post by Beltalowda »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #165
Beltalowda wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He could potentially still hold power for decades to come, into his 90s. So forever? No, obviously not. But we might have to look at him for a long time.

Well, life expectancy for Russian males is below 70 - of course Putin has the best medical care, but I doubt steroids etc. can keep him for too long.

Average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is about 62. Mugabe lived to be 95.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#179

Post by divided »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #99
DFHippie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you should say you will accept the results of an election before you know whether you will win it. This is the basis of the peaceful transfer of power. It shouldn't be hard to accept this. To accept only those elections you win is to deny the legitimacy of democratic governance altogether. If there is evidence the election wasn't fair, you should object. But your evidence that it was unfair shouldn't be your own…

> If there is evidence the election wasn't fair, you should object. Obviously. > But your evidence that it was unfair shouldn't be your own hurt feelings and propaganda. Of course not. I have some real reasons for doubting the results. Three days ago, an argentinian man streamed a video where he analyzed our election's official data set. He found that the older models of our voting machines, less thoroughly audited,…

Did Lula also have more support in the polling in those places that used those older models? I assume those districts would be the poorer districts, and Lula did have more support among the low income, correct? I think you’re looking at correlations in data and fantasizing a causation that isn’t there.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#180

Post by TeMPOraL »

godelski wrote: post #60
subsubzero wrote: post #9

Fun fact, many, many other foreign governments have "interfered" in our elections also. In addition the US has interfered in their elections as well. Its been happening for a very long time.

This comment comes off as malinformation. Malinformation isn't information that is incorrect, but correct information used in a way to create a misleading context. There's 2 problems here. 1) You're implicitly dismissive of a foreign government interfering in our elections. I think most of us here will agree that any interference from any entity is not okay. 2) It muddles the conversation with more noise. A more in d…

> Malinformation isn't information that is incorrect, but correct information used in a way to create a misleading context.

Good, now we finally have an accurate, single-word description of all non-tabloid journalism.

> It muddles the conversation with more noise.

I agree with GP and I believe that this whole conversation is noise. The biggest red herring there ever was (no pun intended). Yes, Russia is interfering with US elections. So does US with Russia's. I can point at any news article and claim foreign interference and, unless you're literally NSA and can map-reduce the entire Internet in an afternoon, there's no way for you to conclusively prove me wrong. And whether a given article is a result of foreign interference or not, it's creating a misleading context anyway.

The right answer is to understand that the news articles, particularly on hot topics, are always manipulated by some combination of: {your party, other party, foreign influence, The Elites, advertising money} - and to treat it accordingly. That is, don't update your views on the world based on second-hand recycled soundbites. Either try to dig in and understand an issue, or accept the fact that you don't know enough to have an opinion. Yes, it's OK for an adult to not have a strong opinion on a topic. And be very careful about any argument that lets you preferentially dismiss things you don't like as malicious interference by third parties.

Post reply on HN