Defeating Trump, Joe Biden Declared Winner of US Presidential Election

“BIDEN WINS” declares the all-caps headline at CNN.com. And the headline at NBC News reads “JOE BIDEN DEFEATS DONALD TRUMP TO WIN THE WHITE HOUSE, NBC NEWS PROJECTS.” NBC News reports: Joe Biden became president-elect Saturday after winning the pivotal state of Pennsylvania, NBC News projected. The former vice president amassed 273 Electoral College votes after winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electors, according…

Debt Collectors Will Soon Be Allowed To Reach You By Text Or On Facebook

The federal government has cleared the way for collection agencies to send unlimited texts, emails and even instant messages to debtors on social media platforms. CBS News reports: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule late last week outlining how collectors can use new communication methods. The federal agency, which is charged with protecting Americans from financial abuse, did…

Sportsbet Says It Will Pay Out Early On Biden As US President

Anonymouse Cowtard writes: When you’re holding millions in bets on the favorite, you don’t take the decision to payout lightly. Betting agencies are often good barometers for political polls, but Sportsbet has been stung before. They incorrectly paid out on bets for the Labor Party in Australia to win two days before the election was held, assuming a victory would come…

Trump Attacks Legitimate Vote-Counting Efforts and Claims Fraud Without Basis

President Trump attacked legitimate vote-counting efforts in remarks from the White House early Wednesday, suggesting attempts to tally all ballots amounted to disenfranchising his supporters, CNN reports. From the report: “Millions and millions of people voted for us,” Trump said in the East Room. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.” His remarks were…

What happens if a president loses an election but won’t leave the White House?

President Donald Trump might win the election. But if he fails — if Biden is elected, and Trump makes good on his threat to not peacefully transfer power — what happens? Source: https://www.livescience.com/what-if-president-rejects-election-results.html

Why You Can’t Rely on Election Forecasts

Zeynep Tufekci, writing at The New York Times: There’s a strong case for ignoring the predictions. Why do we have models? Why can’t we just consider polling averages? Well, presidents are not elected by a national vote total but by the electoral votes of each state, so national polls do not give us the information we need. As two of the…

Wisconsin Republican Party Says Hackers Stole $2.3 Million

Hackers stole $2.3 million from the Wisconsin Republican Party’s account that was being used to help reelect President Donald Trump in the key battleground state, the party’s chairman told The Associated Press on Thursday. From a report: The party noticed the suspicious activity on Oct. 22 and contacted the FBI on Friday, said Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt. Hitt said the…

Java Geeks Discuss ‘The War for the Browser’ and the State of Java Modularization

Self-described “Java geek” nfrankel writes: At the beginning of 2019, I wrote about the state of Java modularization. I took a sample of widespread libraries, and for each of them, I checked whether: – It supports the module system i.e. it provides an automatic module name in the manifest – It’s a full-fledged module i.e. it provides a module-info The results…

Twitch Suddenly Mass-Deletes Thousands of Videos, Citing Music Copyright Claims

“It’s finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music — long a norm among streamers — in response to music industry pressure,” reports Kotaku. But the Verge reports “there’s some funny stuff going on here.”
First, Twitch is telling streamers that some of their content has been identified as violating copyright and that instead of letting streamers file counterclaims, it’s deleting…