AP reports US election results via Ethereum blockchain

  • This API is confusing for multiple reasons.

    The obvious question is why involve a blockchain at all. I don't think there is a coherent answer to that question.

    The second is why are we asking people to poll for information instead of broadcasting it to them via something like webhooks? It's much easier to notify people of updates rather than have them constantly ask for updates.

  • ...why?

  • Here is a simple script to grab election results from AP via The Guardian. No API key required. No over-enegineered "ELEX" Python scripts. Just request the JSON and do whatever you want with the numbers.

    Usage: 1.sh [2-letter state abbrev uppercase]

    Example: 1.sh PA

       cat > 1.sh
    
       #!/bin/sh
    
       x=$(curl  https://interactive.guim.co.uk/2020/11/us-general-election-data/prod/last_updated.json|sed -n '/"time":/{s/{"time":"//;s/"}//;p;}')
       curl https://interactive.guim.co.uk/2020/11/us-general-election-data/prod/data-out/$x/president_details.json|sed 's/.*\"'"$1"'\"://;s/\"[A-Z][A-Z]\":.*//;s/,/\
       /g;s/"candidates":\[//;'
    echo $x

       ^D

  • Shouldn't the election boards be reporting via Ethereum and not news orgs?

  • Surprised they didn't use Chainlink. In fact, I can't even find any references to this "Everipedia OraQle". What is it?

  • This implementations of blockchain are really interesting stuff for people that think blockchain is only for money related stuff.