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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

Would be much more interesting if we knew how the results wound up nonrandom.

Maybe something like the following?

  randWinnerID = (int) Math.random();

It was much worse, all the "winners" were the people who submitted their applications in the first 2 or 3 days.

Do you have a reference? That would be really messed up...

It says that in the video message posted: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1857622883?b...

Crucial, actually. They should provide enough transparency to assure that "not random" != "favored persons not selected".

That's a bit conspiracy-heavy for my tastes. If someone in a position of power in the State Department wants to give a particular individual a greencard there are easier ways than keeping on re-running the greencard lottery 'til they get one.

You'll note I make no accusations. Such a reversal requires transparency as an ordinary matter of course.

There is no reason they shouldn't do this on a Linux system, using published code, under a published procedure. Had they done that, they would't have screwed it up in the first place.

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