A couple hidden features: 1. You can option-click on any of the buttons to see the transition in super slo-mo. (This was mainly for debugging, but it's fun to see how the transitions work in more detail.) 2. You can double-click on any part of the tree, and it will zoom in by one level.

Also, we did a variation that used state-level probabilities to weight the tree. This gave a sense not just of the logical possibilities, but of the likelihood of each, which I liked. However, the FiveThirtyEight state-level probabilities are not fully independent, so you can't multiply them together to compute conditional probabilities. Perhaps next election!

This is a very polite interpretation of (some) traditional journalists' dislike for Mr Silver. It offers a consistent explanation for the dislike and vitriol, but there is another explanation to explore. Silver presents a method of investigation that is not only epistemologically different from traditional punditry, but threatening to it, and their dislike is centered on the threat his method poses, not just its intellectual merits or misunderstanding thereof. There are plenty of things for journalists to intellectually object to - why focus their efforts here?

Consider that Mr Silver has been given awards and accolades most journalists would kill for: Time's list of 100 most influential people in the world, best political blog Webby award, Rolling Stone's 100 agents of change, the editor in chief of Politico listed him as "one of the most powerful people on earth", he's given a prestigious lecture at Columbia Journalism School, etc. He's received accolades, even from traditional journalism sources, that most journalists, even at the NYTimes, would never dream of. Speaking of which, the Public Editor of the Times wrote "he’s probably (and please know that I use the p-word loosely) its most high-profile writer at this particular moment."

All this for someone who has never worked a proper newsroom since college, never had a television show, cable or otherwise, and just started a blog four years ago because he was (supposedly) annoyed at laws that threatened his livelihood - online poker.

So imagine seeing someone like this receiving all the awards you've coveted since you started journalism in earnest. While the recoil against Mr Silver might be clothed in intellectual differences for some, the reason they care probably has more to do with seeing someone who differs from their traditional approach getting so much recognition.

Finally, I'd note that there are many traditional journalists who support Mr Silver's approach - his awards from traditional journalist organizations speak to this. Rather, it's a very specific group that seems to feel threatened.

Given that the first thing I think when I see your username is "who is he going to shit on today", I would suggest that perhaps some "physician, heal thyself" is in order.

I find that, as trite as it sounds, you really do get out of HN what you put in. When I first posted at HN I adopted an aggressive, frankly really fucking douchey attitude that reminds me of your continual one. I'm still slowbanned because of it[1]. When I moderated the dipshit attitude out of my posting, however, it became a lot more fun and I've made a few friends through posting here.

Let's get real here. Ideological downvotes aren't your--and I mean your, in particular--problem. Being an asshole, who apparently can't get through a day of posting without attacking someone or caricaturing a position with which you disagree, is. I mean, come on. "Fandroids hate Apple." "Leftists hate private property." You're not fooling anyone: the schtick you are employing is to make statements that are tailored to offend, under the guise of "stating your opinion," and then get outraged when they do offend and people take advantage of the moderation mechanism of a downvote to say, "we don't want this here." You don't get to be surprised or offended when you do that and conflating rejection of your behavior with rejection of your beliefs is intellectually dishonest.

The problem with the reception of your posts is you. I know this, because I've been there, and I chose not to be quite as much of an ass. You, apparently, have not. Act like less of an asshole and I'll bet you that what you see as "ideological downvotes" go away.

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[1] - The slowban used to annoy me, but I find it moderates my initial, fly-off-the-handle reaction pretty well. I think I'd miss it if it went away.

This behaviour is the same on apple.de or apple.jp, so it's not just the UK site. Moreover, it was added only 2 days after the judgement was upheld:

    HEAD /v/home/n/scripts/hero_resize.js HTTP/1.1
    Host: www.apple.com
    
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: Apache
    **Last-Modified: Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:31:51 GMT**
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    Content-Length: 632
    Content-Type: application/x-javascript
    Cache-Control: max-age=600
    Expires: Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:04:23 GMT
    Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2012 16:54:23 GMT
    Connection: keep-alive

I believe this was before the homepage was altered to display the ruling. Moreover, this was also just 2 days before the iPad mini was announced. Far more likely this is just related to new product announcements than any nefarious scheme.

They've hated him ever since he spoiled the 2008 primary for them. Nate has said he started following politics because of poker, but he started the 538 blog because of the Hillary vs. Obama primary.

The news media were still touting it as a close horse race when Nate knew that it was already over. Obama already had enough delegates that it was almost impossible for him to lose. He saw it as blatant deception on the part of the news media as a way to sell more newspapers. When he pointed this out, he just flat out embarrassed them.

I really miss the original 538 blog. Nate would give snarky commentary on whatever the political news of the day was. Now that he works for the NY Times all he does is crunch the numbers. It's not nearly as entertaining.