Art Thou Bitchun?

Lots of small design and usability improvements on jaanix

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:18:06 GMT

The most important ones are that now you can tune pages with the help of the toolbar button (same old one, just more functionality) and that you can show / hide stories that you have seen with one click.

New "post to jaanix" widget is available too, this is how it looks:

post to jaanix

See my "tune" on jaanix

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:20:33 GMT

Jaanix is a social news site that learns what matters to you. Once learned this "state of mind" can be shared with your friends. Here's my:

jaanix update

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:05:40 GMT

jaanix got a brand new backend with lots of new features:

same url posts - aggregated, but you can always have your own version saved and edited

individual stats per post - see how many people you've reached with your post

new system sliders - you can control more aspects of the recommendation algorithm

customizing list of topics - you can list topics as your personal interests to tune and highlight them under posts

tagging of any post - if you do not like how somebody has tagged a post but do not care enough to save it you can just tag it

no registration required - new users get access to all the features of the system without registration (and registration just got easier too)

new post button - combined all the tabs into one, please update your bookmarks in tools, old url will be gone soon

new urls for topics - topics have urls of their own, works in your personal jaanix too - you.jaanix.com/topic

import of links from del.icio.us - the backend is more scalable, high quality links are welcome

new account settings - hide posts, control image preview size or hide image previews completely for more even layout

switched from rss to atom - please update your subscription, if you are using your browser as a reader - feeds are personalized now

inline editing of tags, comments, posts - more ajax for seamless and efforless editing

send your feedback to feedback@jaanix.com or contact "jaanix" on skype.

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:54:41 GMT

Notice that peaks are at 60%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%. The peak at 65% is less visible, but is still there.

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 07:14:03 GMT

Why are you still here? Go see jaanix now. Let me know if something doesn't work for you. The quality of links is amazing, for example check out Russia on jaanix.

My brainz!

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:34:06 GMT

How it was done - conspiracy version

Master! Watch for the level of water in the bulb.

A Model for the Observed Election Data

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 07:30:22 GMT

The model of election adopted from slobin:

There is one control parameter X - the degree of control over election outcome, that varies from region to region. It includes control over the minds of the people with propaganda, forced attendance, forced vote for a given party, a ballot filled for a person by somebody else, or a ballot posted for a person that never came to elections. The end result is the same - X% of the voters will vote for our party no matter what. This parameter varies from region to region. In some places it is 100%.

The rest of the population (1-X) % are not affected by this and vote the way they want. Most of them just stay out of the whole thing for obvious reasons, but say 50% of them actually go and vote. The distribution of their votes across different parties doesn't change much in different regions.

The important point is that given only the results there is no way to look inside of X and say how specifically this X was achieved.

Thanks Everybody

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:12:19 GMT

In case you've missed: tons of great comments on Slashdot on who's to blame and what should be done about Soviet Russia.

Detailed: Putin's Party Share and Invalid Ballots vs. Turnout (%)

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 08:56:54 GMT

Source

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:10:25 GMT

A lot of you have asked me if there's an explanation for this graph and if it proves or disproves something.

As usual with statistics a single argument will not prove or disprove anything by itself, this is not logic where if you find a contradiction - you're done, or if you've proved something, you've proved it no matter what other arguments you can find.

This graph is the single most convincing graphical argument that I can find that "proves" that the elections were not free and that that they were rigged. Of course there are other arguments for and against that. If you follow the news will will find plenty of them, and you have to find them all, combine them with your prior assumptions to come up with your own conclusions.

As for the actual method of how this was done, I'm not so convinced that it was just ballot stuffing and nothing else. It seems to me that different portions of the graph show different methods of fraud, and it is just a coincidence that they all lined up like that.

The top 80-100% turnover portion is the most clear example when people have no voice at all, like in the soviet union. No matter if they showed up because they were forced to, or they didn't show up and their voices were counted anyway. Chechnya and Ingushetia had almost 0% real turnout and they've reported ~90% - ballot stuffing at its worst.

The dark left cluster shows a different story to me - a story of coercion and massive propaganda. People were forced to attend, people were forced to show their vote, people were given the idea that there is no other choice. And everybody not voting for the main line was discouraged to attend - there's no reason to go if your vote will end up counted against your will because of the 7% barrier (if you voted for a party that didn't pass it, your vote will go to the top contenders proportionally). Ballot stuffing is still there, but it probably plays a minor role here.

Party's Share vs. Voter Turnout (%) in 2007 Parlament Elections in Russia

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:09:08 GMT

Guess which party is Putin's (hint - correlation coefficient is 90%). X axis: percent voter turnout at a given territory, Y axis: percent voted for a given party. Each dot is an election territory.

via russian blogs: original data, explanation?.

Update: my interpretation

Update 2: Uploaded to Swivel:

Update 3: For comparison - the same graph for 2006 elections in Canada:

Update 4: Much more detailed version:

Update 5: A simple model of elections that explains the data.

Update 6: Final election results are available, now if you plot party share out of all registered voters vs turnout you get 97% correlation:

Update 7: Excellent slashdot discussion

Update 8: More evidence via

x axis - turnout percent, y axis - number of elections commissions reporting this turnout, notice the peaks are exactly on the round numbers.

privacy - shrivacy

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:39:32 GMT

Are you still using livejournal? Do you care about your privacy? (In Soviet Russia) SUP is already tracking your visits and is showing this information to the author of the journal you've visited. Currently there's no way to turn this "feature" off.

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:19:17 GMT

jaanix status:

comments - working,
rss - working,
tags equalizer - working

todo:

comment ratings
people finder
stats

overall:

posting on jaanix is fun
finding other stuff on jaanix is fun
people discovering your stuff is fun

What are you waiting for?

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:42:34 GMT

Once jaanix has comments, I'll be out of livejournal. You can follow me on my jaanix blog, or official jaanix blog

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:51:09 GMT

jaanix.com update:

Added delete account option, now you can wipe out all your posts and ratings

Added tuning in the personal blogs, now you can filter based on the author and still be able to tune the stories.

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:28:21 GMT

jaanix is fast again, give it a try - no registration required to tune the web

jaanix.com update

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:26:47 GMT

Next rev is up and running (response time is slow, sorry), no tune-in or registration required to use it.

jaanix - your personal internet tuner: with a twist of a few knobs sort and filter the huge onslaught of stuff on internet demanding your attention.

jaanix update

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:03:18 GMT

added topic tuner on the right, let me know how it works for you.

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:40:06 GMT

It is 10x easier to post on jaanix, especially with images and video, and now I am posting things 10x faster than I ever did with livejournal.

Scary thought, if this happens with others too, how I'm going to keep up with that? Recommender algorithm will help, but still...

jaanix update

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:42:33 GMT

Added rss feeds, now you friends that do not use jaanix can subscribe to your jaanix mini-blog.

jaanix v2 preview

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:01:09 GMT

Preview of the next rev of jaanix is up and running, now it's a mini journal with a recommender feed.

You can save things you care about into your jaanix blog with one click, it can be a link, an image, a video, or a free form posting. Others will see it on the radar and will be able to rank it or save it to their blog too. The radar is driven by recommendation algorithm, that takes into account everything - your interests, your friends, your past rankings, both implicit (extracted from your history) and explicit.

jaanix.com
my blog on jaanix

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Update: old content was not migrated to the new server, please create new account.

Are you ready?

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:47:30 GMT

Six degrees of separation is so last century - now everybody is just one click away.

How do you manage all these clicks?

how much do you value your privacy?

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 03:00:34 GMT

Facebook employees know what profiles you look at
If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.
Livejournal is not like facebook at all
The text in the LJ database isn't even plaintext, so even if she did have private posts, a query couldn't get to them... you'd need to use a web tool with an admin tool which does ACLs and logging. (Logging! Any administrative view-private-stuff on LJ is logged forever, and any admin can review who's doing what privileged actions and why....)

Whuffie Ring

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:36:23 GMT

Whuffie Ring

jaanix is back up

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:15:09 GMT

jaanix is back online, now hosted at server axis.

No more comcast - modem lost connection - next technician visit is only possible in a week + $75 if it is any problem on my side (including modem).