Did Tech Websites Exploit the Boston Marathon Bombing? 182
Nerval's Lobster writes "These days, when something in the world goes very wrong, it seems as if everybody learns about it first on Twitter and Facebook. In the minutes after homemade bombs turned the finish line of the Boston Marathon into a crime scene, terms such as #BostonMarathon shot to the top of Twitter's Trends list; across the country, office workers first learned of the attack when someone posted a message on a Facebook page. Social networks have become this generation's radio, the default conduit for the freshest information. As first responders treated the wounded and the minutes ticked past, news organizations began vacuuming up Twitter and Facebook posts from around Boston and posting it on their Websites, along with 'regular' text updates. A Vine video-snippet of a bomb going off near the finish line, knocking a runner off his feet, ended up embedded into dozens of blog postings. When a disaster strikes, and many of those same news Websites post 'live updates' that incorporate tons of social-networking posts, they face accusations of exploiting the tragedy in the name of pageviews and revenue. That's not surprising—long before 'yellow journalism' became a term, people have charged news organizations with playing up humanity's worst for their own gain. In the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings, online pundits lashed out against Mashable, The Verge, Wired, and other publications that had posted live updates, accusing them of stepping outside their usual coverage areas for cynical gain. In the following piece, a number of tech editors-in-chief, including The Verge's Joshua Topolsky and Mashable's Lance Ulanoff, talk about their approaches to covering the tragedy."
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Some Websites that posted “live updates” faced accusations of exploiting the tragedy in the name of pageviews and revenue." ??
Each time a disaster happens, we're FLOODED with the same info, repeated over and over... on TV and Internet...
So can I ask something : What's the difference between a website and a channel, such as Fox/CBC/CNN/etc !?
Why only the "Websites" and not every damn TV channel that broadcast the same ****ing news all day long?
ty.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern "news" channels are basically just a loop of the five worst things that happened in the world today.
Film at 11.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern news channels are the five worst things that happened to the world today.
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Modern "news" channels are basically just a loop of the five worst things that happened in the world today, presented from the perspective the Government want's you to have.
Film at 11.
FTFY!
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presented from the perspective the Government want's you to have.
Film at 11.
Yeah, that.
Notice a complete lack of anything bad happening in Iraq/Afghanistan on TV. Absolutely no outrage over the war, only brave soldiers coming home to new Ford Mustangs...yeah, that.
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Modern news? This is all very old news. Disasters and wars have been great for the media at least since the invention of the printing press.
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Hence The Onion's "area man" meme.
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This a thousand times.
I was in the doctor's office today and watched over an hour of "breaking live news" in which we learned:
- bombs went off
- injuries and deaths
- speculation
- speculation
- FEAR
- speculation
- TERROR
- speculation
- TERROR SECURITY INCREASED IN MAJOR CITIES
- speculation
Then we repeated the above in a loop. And were continuing to do so when I left. I counted at least 23 uses of the word "terror" in one 15 minute segment, including the new and popular "terror event".
The noise from twitter and
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If you or anyone else sits down in front of a news website/TV and watches the same stories being repeated time after time, that's your fault, not the news providers. They're there to tell you the news.
I personally still like watching the scheduled news at 10 on the BBC, once a day, and maybe listening to the radio on the way to work in case there's anything urgent happening
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Yeh, somewhere there's probably film/pictures of someone leaving the bomb. You could probably correlate it with other pictures/videos from earlier that would help you backtrack the person's tracks.
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that would be ILLEGAL and violate the fifth ammendment. The constitution does NOT EXPLICITLY permit video surveillance.
(roman_mir, blocked by liberal moderators)
Joke or not? It's impossible to tell.
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So Faux news telling me over and over again how Windows 8 can improve my life is not okay either? Me thinks you are nitpicking a bit...
Lots of misinformation (Score:4, Informative)
This is all social media's doing.
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CNN reported Ryan Lanza was the Newtown shooter at first. Then tweets followed.
Ryan being Adams brother.
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Who knew?
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
No wonder there was so much misinformation. First there was 1 dud bomb that didn't go off, then there were 5. Then there were none.
This is all social media's doing.
Was all the information we received during the 911 attacks accurate right from the start? At least I heard wildly different accounts as the situation developed, so I'd say no.
"Social media" didn't really exist back then, and certainly isn't the cause. When something sudden happens it takes time for the information to disseminate, and for a while people have to rely on rumours. It's the same as it ever was.
It's possible that one thing has changed: people have developed unrealistic expectations for how quickly you can get accurate information from far away.
Re:Lots of misinformation (Score:5, Interesting)
Where were you ? I for one was lurking on a very busy IRC channel before going to the University. Them someone posted `WWWWTTTFFFF!!!!!`, a few seconds later he said that a plane crashed in the building, and a minute later he started sharing (yeah, we then had to send it to other people manually ..) webcam snapshots. That was pretty much a social network at work.
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Before that, my school went on lockdown
Sorry, but this just fucking annoys me. What the fuck is 'lockdown' and why fucking bother. Maybe it's because I went to schools that actually suffered terrorist attacks.
Which incidentally is why I have no fucking sympathy for Boston right now. People in Boston funded the terror attacks against me. Cunts.
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The iron triangle of news media: Fast, accurate, thoughtful. Choose [at most] two.
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Also, the NY Post's. They said there was 12 dead.
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The NY Post also ran the (now thoroughly falsified) "news" that a Saudi suspect had been taken into custody early after the blast. That served as a great filter for identifying racist right-wing nutters, who were eager to pass along the NY Post's predictable uncorroborated tabloid Islamophobia as if it were an actual news source.
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The NY Post also ran the (now thoroughly falsified) "news" that a Saudi suspect had been taken into custody early after the blast. That served as a great filter for identifying racist right-wing nutters, who were eager to pass along the NY Post's predictable uncorroborated tabloid Islamophobia as if it were an actual news source.
That "news item" was previously included in the Wikipedia article on this event, [wikipedia.org] with Daily Mail serving as the cited source.
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Let's get one thing straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And they are mutually exclusive?
Re:Let's get one thing straight... (Score:4, Informative)
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And they are mutually exclusive?
Not absolutely, but when push comes to shove profits will come first.
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Unless it's employees are volunteers, public service organizations operate for profit as well, they just don't give it to anyone else.
There is no license to cover serious topics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There is no license to cover serious topics (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea that tech blogs can cover stories about tech, but should leave coverage of serious political and human issues to the "big boys" of traditional media, is ridiculous.
Right. But the idea that tech blogs should stick to tech stuff isn't. People categorize information because it helps them manage the information overload of their daily lives. I go to tech sites to read about tech things. When I want politics, if ever, I go to a political site. When I want entertainment news, if ever, I go to an entertainment website.
This categorization of information works very well and helps reduce clutter and overload. It also allows specialization in coverage. Tech blog writers have no special credentials for politics or entertainment news, so why should they pretend they are the best source of information about either? And why should a tech website be wasting bandwidth/storage/author time covering something that is being covered better somewhere else where those who want such coverage can easily find it themselves?
It's not like people who read tech blogs are incapable of going to general news sites when they want general news, is it? Do technical people have some limit on how well they can navigate the net?
Re:There is no license to cover serious topics (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree with what you say, but I was addressing the criticisms in the article, which were that there was something improper about Tech sites covering this event, as opposed to simply these sites not having the expertise to produce something that readers would value.
Most likely the Tech sites thought that given the level of user interest in this topic, that any new perspective the they could add to the topic would be valuable to readers. Some sites mentioned claimed that they are not "Tech" sites or that t
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Value in your first paragraph is very misleading. Value to whom? Does main stream media provide more value than a tech site? Perhaps to the Government or other agency trying to spread propaganda. Do they generate value to people searching for facts? Not in the last 10 years they have not.
Let me further state that the reason so many other news sources are popping up, is because the main stream media has become almost pure propaganda. As more and more people catch on to that fact, the demand will increa
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It's not like people who read tech blogs are incapable of going to general news sites when they want general news, is it? Do technical people have some limit on how well they can navigate the net?
No, and presumably neither do you. So you're free to go to the political site if wish, and navigate away from a tech site that's trying to cover "politics" (actually breaking events). What's your problem with that? If anything the people reading the tech sites for breaking events will reduce the load on the political server sites that you want to visit.
Tech blog writers have no special credentials for politics or entertainment news, so why should they pretend they are the best source of information about either?
"Political and entertainment" sites (e.g. mainstream news outlets) cover tech news, even though they often clearly lack the ability to do so accurately. Ofte
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No, and presumably neither do you. So you're free to go to the political site if wish, and navigate away from a tech site that's trying to cover "politics" (actually breaking events). What's your problem with that?
It's a waste of time for someone to go to a tech site and be presented with off-topic material that can be better found elsewhere. If someone wants that material, there are plenty of places they can go that are better suited for it and it won't get in the way of the purpose of the tech site.
I.e., I came to the tech site for tech info. Getting useless info that isn't tech related is a waste of the user's time.
If anything the people reading the tech sites for breaking events will reduce the load on the political server sites that you want to visit.
I don't care about the load on webservers that I don't want to visit.
"Political and entertainment" sites (e.g. mainstream news outlets) cover tech news,
This is the "someone else
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Moreover, people who focus mostly on tech in their day to day lives will generally have better resources to blog, post or whatever on tech specialty sites. If they instead go to a site they don't normally visit much, because a particular event has happened and that event is being covered there, they don't have those same resources. It's perfectly natural for people to want to post where they already know who at least some of the trolls are, how to do bold face or italics, and where they have an existing ID
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This categorization of information works very well and helps reduce clutter and overload. It also allows specialization in coverage. Tech blog writers have no special credentials for politics or entertainment news, so why should they pretend they are the best source of information about either?
Blogs do not pretend they are the best source of information, users decide whether they are. Sometimes they are, as in the case of politics or entertainment news. In the former case, politicians are big fat liars and all major media outlets are in the corner of one politician or another. In the latter case, everyone and their mother has complained that there is no longer any useful and insightful movie review service on the order of Siskel & Ebert, and again the mass media primarily covers the mass medi
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Pathetic all round, and not really a good idea to remind people about it.
People are interested in tragedies (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a marathon runner, and the first I heard about this was from friends inquiring if I knew anybody there. I can't conceive of what earthly good this information would have done them (perhaps they wanted to offer me some sort of comfort if I had) but I do know that whatever it is, people are fascinated by the tragedies and want to know everything they can the soonest they can.
So I can hardly blame news companies for giving people the fastest information that they can. They're not so much "exploiting" the tragedy as giving people what it is they're craving (or at least, the closest substitute they can get to it, the unverified raw data stream). I don't think it's doing them any good (that's a different rant) but they're not forcing this on people. They're doing what people ask them to do.
I don't see the problem (Score:5, Informative)
In what way did news coverage make things worse? If a huge crowd of cameramen were to obstruct the way of emergency vehicles I would understand the uproar, but absent that I fail to see what damage could journalism possibly cause.
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In one 15 minute news segment that I watched today, I counted 23 uses of the word "terror". Over the course of an hour, they had non-stop live reporting - but told us basically the same basic known *facts* - there were three of them - and filled the rest of the time with speculation and fear-mongering.
Among the patients discussing this in the doctor's office I was in today (that's why i got force-fed an hour of this crap), the consensus was that the increased police presence that we'll be seeing in several
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Among the patients discussing this in the doctor's office I was in today (that's why i got force-fed an hour of this crap)
I wasn't aware that it was compulsory to watch TV anywhere.
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Regardless of that hypothetical, do you really not see _any_ way damage can be done through "journalism"?
No. Perhaps you should explain to us what the problems are then rather than ask pointless rhetorical questions?
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not fault of social media (Score:4, Informative)
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Not only that, but the summary is assuming that everyone uses Facebook and Twitter. I don't, and I'm sure I'm not alone. A lot of people wouldn't know where to look on Twitter or Facebook to see the latest information. They may know some of the local news outlets and visit their web sites. By re-posting info from social media, the news sites are enabling the non-Facebook, non-Twitter crowd to be as up to date as everyone else. This is far more useful (aside from the danger of misinformation) than a vag
Caught my eye (Score:4, Insightful)
across the country, office workers first learned of the attack when someone posted a message on a Facebook page.
I have no idea if this is true or not, but unfortunately I believe it.
People waste so much paid work time on Facebook. Why don't they put it to productive use, and post on Slashdot instead?
How is this different from the phone? (Score:3)
Re:How is this different from the phone? (Score:5, Funny)
People made calls and sent texts immediately. This affects their monthly bill. Based on this TFS's reasoning, should we not see AT&T and Sprint as exploiting the tragedy as well?
All those texts and phone calls overwhelmed and slowed the local cell services for hours. :-)
In related news, AT&T wireless users didn't notice the difference.
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Cell providers only profit if they calls go through, and so they only profit to the point where they can connect a call. They would be taking advantage of the situation only if there was some location that they knew would be affected by bombs and made sure and built out the infrastructure to handle it, and then added a surcharge for some sort of peak coverage. Otherwise, it's just higher call volume.
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I agree. [I]t's just higher call volume.That's the same situation that TFS describes with social networks.
The communications medium is being used more, but since it is an internet based medium it's treated as something new. What's especially odd about this piece is that it's acting like the "Tech Websites" were somehow rema
It Doesn't Matter... (Score:2)
It doesn't particularly matter if they were trying to exploit it or not since they just can't do non-tech major breaking news reporting as good as the big boys.
Take The Verge, for example, who seem to not grasp the simple concept that if you're going to try and live blog, you write from the bottom up to allow for rapid F5'ing. Mashable's content is no better than one going to Twitter and typing "Boston" in the search box.
If you want to exploit something, you need to give them reason to stick around while yo
Who are we talking about again? (Score:5, Informative)
As first responders treated the wounded and the minutes ticked past, news organizations began vacuuming up Twitter and Facebook posts from around Boston and posting it on their Websites, along with 'regular' text updates. A Vine video-snippet of a bomb going off near the finish line, knocking a runner off his feet, ended up embedded into dozens of blog postings. When a disaster strikes, and many of those same news Websites post 'live updates' that incorporate tons of social-networking posts, they face accusations of exploiting the tragedy in the name of pageviews and revenue.
So, wait, are talking about "tech websites" or "traditional journalists" here? Because when I first heard about the explosions (from Twitter, naturally), I went to boston.com - which was in some kind of "low bandwidth" mode where they front page was only showing tweets related to the explosions.
"Traditional" media throughout the aftermath referenced tweets. NPR referenced the Boston Police Department's Twitter feed for updates. Local TV stations turned to Twitter, Vine, and YouTube to find videos of the explosion.
I guess only tech websites aren't "allowed" to mine Twitter? Because from what I could tell, everyone was doing that, from print to radio to TV to the web.
Why was this stupid question (Score:4, Insightful)
legitimized with an editorial?
Traditional news sites repost content from social networks and blog sites, and then traditional media blames social networks and blog sites for exploiting tragedy and the errors they themselves repeated.
Who fucking cares what they think. You should be attacking them directly, not defending yourselves with equivocation about page views and advertising. Newspapers and TV news have ads too, and their websites are even more obnoxious with them.
Maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Confirmed" is the new "reported" (Score:3)
If people would simply put, "it is reported" in tweets instead of "it is confirmed" (when it is not), we could really cut down on a lot of misinformation.
Don't care... (Score:5, Interesting)
If The Verge, Slashdot, Wired or, heck, Gizmag want to write about the explosion - it is their 1st Amendment right to do so. Same goes for the National Enquirer, STAR, or any of the other tabloid journals. This isn't any different than WSJ, NYT, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Al Jazeera, etc. can write about tech items, happiness, tragedy, cat getting stuck in a tree or anything else considered newsworthy.
Each outlet will be judged by how well they do their job, and will receive an appropriate reputation.
Since our news organizations are a combination of subscriber and advertiser revenue based, they have to write according to their generating said revenue.
We can either just deal with the situation as it stands or have state-run news organizations. I really don't think anyone would be comfortable with the latter as even approaching truthfulness or integrity in the long term.
If the 'Big Boys' don't like the upstarts encroaching on their turf - all I can say is.. too bad.
Correction (Score:2)
"I must apologize for calling any of these outlets "news organizations" , I was incorrect. Now back to regularly scheduled programming. "
Slashdot too (Score:2)
Didn't Slashdot do the exact same thing yesterday?
On the other hand, not saying anything seems callous, so you're damned no matter what you do.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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> There's nothing wrong with Slashdot posting the story,
Except that it literally doesn't matter. 7k ppl die in US highway accidents daily.
Wow, 2.5 million people die in us highway accidents a year? That's about 1 in 140 people per year. Ouch.
In the uk it's 1 in 20000 a year.
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No way, the US only had 33,808 road deaths in 2010.
US road deaths per 100k ppl is 12.3, UK's is 3.59.
US road deaths per 1 billion km is 8.5, UK's is 5.8.
We drive more & farther in the US than the UK, but we're still worse drivers...
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Contradicting Betteridge (Score:3)
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Ok, I'll give you that. But I hope this puts a fire under their asses to change the behavior for breaking news on tragedies.
There were no commercials during the coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing as well as 9/11. If the news is important enough to interrupt the current broadcast for live coverage, they traditionally stick with the
No (Score:2)
No tech "journalists" did not. The media did.
One thing wrong about this is taking people on Twitter's word for it. Twitter and other social networks are the web equivalent of everyone shouting OMG ponies except it's not ponies.....
What are they supposed to do? (Score:2)
Orwellian double-speak (Score:2)
Can we dispense with the term "homemade"? This is a bogus term on many levels. A) It implies that there are store-bought (or restaurant-quality) devices available. It's about as useful as calling some fancy devices 'gourmet' bombs. B) It also implies a connection to so-called 'homegrown' terrorists in the same way that the Benghazi attack was due to (and justified by) a video (which it wasn't but what difference does that make). Call them what they are: an improvised explosive device (IED). That is an
What about sports media (Score:2)
Those horrible bloggers (Score:3)
Don't they know that exploiting tragedy for profit is the job of the mainstream media?
(as is handwringing over doing just that)
Seriously, if you're in the news business, whether a blogger or a regular media member, exploiting tragedies is part and parcel of your business. "If it bleeds, it leads", right?
"exploit" (Score:2)
in my country all major news media relies on ad-generated revenue. they exploit everything from human interest stories to the weather.
Kind of a silly presumption (Score:2)
You can say this about any for profit industry that benefits from disaster - media outlets, mobile phone service providers, funeral homes, medical institutions and doctors, nurses, paramedics. Life is life, and we have businesses based around reacting to disasters, pain, and suffering. I don't think anyone in those industries leaps for joy when it happens though. To pick on the tech industry specifically is kind of weak. They're pretty far down the line in terms of the beneficiaries of the death econ
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I find it ironic that I found out about the bombs on slashdot first.
I rather says something profound, but the actual lesson is left as an exercise for the poster...
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Slashdot was uncharacteristically quick about that one.
I guess Twitter broke the news a full 15 minutes before CNN did. But as a friend put it, social media is absolutely unmatched at breaking the news... but it's a clusterfuck after the first 10 minutes.
Take us back a few years, and the folks at NORAD were learning about 9/11 from CNN.
It used to be you could switch from the immediate source over to the real news to get real, confirmed information. All the news outlets did this time was repost tragedy porn
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Then let us all be glad they didn't read that first and cook up a batch of dioxygen difluoride to use.
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Which was a cool article, but did not describe any good way to make a portable bomb a pressure cooker. It did, however, describe very well how you could kill yourself and everyone in your kitchen by using it as part of your chemistry set.
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And revoke their "Press" privileges : the access passes,etc if they exceed a specified number (and maybe grade) of "inaccuracy events"
Their job is to present facts and not opinions, so this should be relatively easy to implement
If they did that, the only news would be "Explosions reported at Boston Marathon, check back next month for details when we tell you what the authorities want you to know".
Without news crews on the ground, people would only get one side of the story, after it has been sanitized by the government. A terrorist attack (or disaster) is chaotic, even authoritative sources will sometimes release inaccurate or incomplete information. Independent witnesses interviewed at the scene will sometimes have wildly differe
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Thing is... unless there is some risk to me, or my family or friends are involved, I wouldn't mind only hearing about things once the details are worked out.
Granted, I do not want a sanitized version, but you can still collect what facts you can at the time of the event and then take the time to put the pieces together and release an independent analysis later.
The only need for immediate news is if that news serves some purpose to you other than just gaping at spectacle. If anything, I think this sort of "
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Amazing isn't it?
The same applies for internet news.
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We could, however, grade where the facts aren't in despute. Is the person in an interview what the media describes them as? Is he really the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, or is he just an assistant professor at stamford? Is person X really a psychiatrist or does she really just have a bachelors in psychology? Is the disgraced politician really a (R), a (D), or an (I)? Various studies from sources such as the Columbia School of Journalism have shown some news sources are much less reliable on such points
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It is also quite incorrect. It claims that a consumer-grade cooker won't go above 2 atm. That's patently absurd. If you block the exit and the safety valve fails, the pressure can easily reach a level that the metal will burst.
But that's if the safety valve fails. Well, the best course of action in any operation is to never assume that the safety valve will work properly and to neve
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That xkcd does not include instructions on how to make such a bomb. It doesn't mention black powder at all, or ball bearings.
It is also quite incorrect. It claims that a consumer-grade cooker won't go above 2 atm. That's patently absurd. If you block the exit and the safety valve fails, the pressure can easily reach a level that the metal will burst.
I think most modern pressure cookers are designed so the gasket between the lid and the pot will give way and leak pressure before the metal pot explodes so you'd have to have a failure of the pressure valve, the pressure release safety valve *and* the gasket. Older pressure cookers often didn't have that that gasket level of safety, so a failure of the pressure valve and safety *could* result in explosion.
But that's if the safety valve fails. Well, the best course of action in any operation is to never assume that the safety valve will work properly and to never push the envelope where it has to work to keep you alive.
Isn't that pretty much the normal use-case for the pressure cooker. The normal pressure valve is ty
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And I'm especially suspicious of wild-ass conspiracy theories that would require the cooperation of a massive number of players. Sure, a half dozen people could know about attacks and keep it secret. But enough people to significantly move the national exchange averages and world gold market (without all the sales coming from a suspiciously tiny number of sources), all conspiring together to keep a terrorist attack secret? Not a single whistle-blower unnerved by the thought of murdering civilians who might
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And I'm especially suspicious of wild-ass conspiracy theories that would require the cooperation of a massive number of players. Sure, a half dozen people could know about attacks and keep it secret. But enough people to significantly move the national exchange averages and world gold market (without all the sales coming from a suspiciously tiny number of sources), all conspiring together to keep a terrorist attack secret? Not a single whistle-blower unnerved by the thought of murdering civilians who might call in a tip in advance? Your blind paranoia, and deep misunderstanding of how actual institutions work, is astounding.
Are you sure "wild-ass conspiracy theory" is the right term, since a) I'm pointing to actual events that could be investigated, and b) I'm not stating that it happened that way, only that some investigation would be prudent?
Also, is "blind paranoia" the appropriate term, since c) I'm not especially afraid, emotional, or irrational and I'm not trying to make others feel afraid?
If you're so astounded, then tell me how actual institutions work. Allay my suspicions and reassure me by using logic and reference (
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I agree, a troll would not be able to allay your suspicions. Nor might any entirely rational and intelligent response; arguing with "birthers" or young-earth-creationists is similarly futile. Nonetheless, I'll make one brief attempt:
1) some classes of conspiracy are only amenable operation withing small tight-knit groups of "true believer" participants;
2) typical terrorist attacks are in this class: while there may be a huge number of after-the-fact "sympathizers," actual operational knowledge is kept withi
I appreciate the effort (Score:2)
I appreciate the effort, but for all the well-chosen words in your post, it's nothing more than a restatement of your initial position.
I see no reference to experience or external authority, no allusions to history or similar situations, and no compelling logical flow from a premise to a conclusion. It fairly reeks of sophistry [thefreedictionary.com], using such vague terms as "large number of players", "overwhelming majority", and "number rapidly increases".
For contrast, a credible argument could have compared the amount of Cypr
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"Allusions to history"? You need me to cite historical examples of every day the value of gold has changed several percent without terrorist attacks, as if speculative market price fluctuations are an unprecedentedly rare? Gold prices jump up and down all the time; so do stock market prices (and if you need historical "proof" for those statements, fuck you). The burden of proof is on you to show how these are caused by global terrorist conspiracies (instead of normal market forces that jerk prices around ev
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1 - The DJIA is useless as an indicator of economic activity. Not just bad - *COMPLETELY USELESS* The S&P500 has been steadily rising the last few months, and mostly still is.
2 - Gold has been dropping consistently for roughly a month, ever since some European countries that are in trouble had indicated that they might offload some of their holdings to pay off their debts.
You're correlation hunting.
Thank you (Score:2)
Thank you. An island of expertise in a roiling sea of opinion.
You're correlation hunting.
I sometimes wonder about the general reaction to "correlation hunting". I'm not in any way defending the position, only asking whether it's a coincidence. Is calling something a "conspiracy theory" the new way to shut down a conversation?
I always thought good science starts with the phrase "that's odd...", but maybe it doesn't apply in some circumstances.
Anyway, thank you for the reassuring perspective.
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Profit is good.
No inherently it isn't.
We need to foster innovation in news.
Why? And innovation!= improvement anyway.
If no one pursued profit, what revolutionary developments in soundbite and factoid technology will go missed?
Ah, apologies, I missed the sarcasm initially.
Re: (Score:2)
Here you have a tech website in its natural habitat, being a gigantic hypocrite
Slashdot posted one story, the rest of the material was comments by slashdot readers. We didn't get hourly updates inviting us to agree with our challenge the latest incorrect rumour.