bolder88

She's a she. It fits into the whole hacker news agenda of championing women in tech.

The fact it's not true doesn't really matter.

If a man had done the exact same project, no one would care. So, well done her for being a woman.

> I used to build tweet spam bots, I am very familiar with how they get detected.

I would have thought that the content of a tweet is quite low down on their detection list. IP address, user account, frequency of tweets etc would be much higher.

Yes it's nothing new, but the internet has vastly accelerated the phenomenon. If you post some idiotic comment, and 1,000 people agree with you, that's quite a powerful feedback loop.

The problem with any collection of people though, is popular opinion is rewarded, unpopular opinion is shot down.

That means people tend to go with the crowd - hivemind.

Reddit - collection of mainly unemployed young left wing anti-government, anti-corporation, anti-mainstream types who have far too much time on their hands to look at memes and commenting.

You can make several generalisations about reddit users though.

They're likely anti-government, anti-corporation, ant-advertising, anti-mainstream.

They're likely left of centre politically.

They're not busy - that's why they spend time commenting on Reddit. More likely unemployed / students / etc.

They absolutely love to be outraged by something.

By definition, they are the sort of person who would comment on Reddit, which is a certain personality.

They're by no means a random sample of humanity thank god.

It's a fascinating example of what happens when very bored people get together online and start swarming about as if they were one person though. Mob rule, hivemind, internet hate groups, react first, research / put into context later.

Also pretty ugly to watch.

I don't bother commenting on Reddit anymore, and rarely on here. There is absolutely no point.

The other funny thing is that there's a violent dislike of mainstream media on websites such as Reddit, and constant criticism when news stations take things out of context.

Then they do things like this themselves on a daily basis!

Internet commenting is a cesspool of idiocy. Hivemind, kneejerk reactions, things taken out of context like this.

It's an absolute waste of time commenting on anything online, because there is an absolutely inexhaustible supply of people who are wrong.

(Yes I realise the irony).

I don't buy that. On the web, there is far more money in direct response advertising. Branding is far more prominent in old media.

You're missing the point.

You can classify all you want, but my central point was:

If I'm about to buy a washing machine, I would go search on google. I would not go on twitter and tweet "OMGLOLPOP! Gonna buy a washing machine what does every1 (including advertisers) recommend #confused"

So Google get me at the crucial time I'm about to buy something. Twitter don't.

Advertising makes money when the audience has intent.

People search google for "Best washing machine". Google shows them adverts for washing machines, customer buys washing machine.

Where is the intent on twitter? To gossip? I just don't see it.

If someone is about to buy something, they're likely to go to google and search. They're not likely to go to twitter. Google gets them at the crucial point before they buy something.

Is there much evidence to suggest that actually brings in value and profit though?

People search google for washing machines, then click on an advert, and buy a washing machine. I can see how that works, and makes google lots of money.

But a "promoted tweet", to people who are tweeting gossip, wasting time, etc? There's no intent there. They're not looking for a washing machine, they're wasting time.

profit? What relevance has profit to tech companies?!

If a child steps into the road without looking and is in imminent danger of being killed, I'd scream at them, as would any other sane parent.

Sometimes, children need to be screamed at. It's good for them.

Possibly related, the fact that when you hang a door, the gap between the top hinge and the top of the door, should be smaller than the gap between the bottom hinge and the floor.

This makes the door spacing look equal from our usual standing position.

What sounds good on paper/design (Make the spacing equidistant) can often look terrible in practice.

I think the font looks ok, but the "d" looks bad to me. And I'm not convinced about the "t". Maybe they make sense on paper, and have very nice mathematically correct proportions, but they still don't look right to me.

In the UK, inheritance tax starts at around £325k - which is basically a little bit above the average house price.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/inheritancetax/intro/basics.htm

You can get around it by 'gifting' things to your kids, as long as you then don't die for 7 years after etc etc.

On your last point, it certainly does exist. What I think happens is people like me don't bother trying so hard, because I'll be damned if I'm going to give the government more money. However, people who are already making much more than me, just hire a good accountant to 'make the problem go away' - eg register offshore companies etc etc

Are you seriously saying, that when the UK government had a higher tax rate of 97% in the 60s/70s, you would have been more than happy to do that extra overtime work, and would have gladly received your 3%??? Crazy

Anything over 49% is slavery, and will end up crippling the country rather than raising more tax revenue. Which is why it was absolutely right and proper that the current government reduced the top rate from 50% to 45%.

Well, that is a little consolation for you, true, the government lets you keep a little bit to keep you from rebelling and keep you placid.

However, I feel that I'm already paying the government FAR more money than I should be, so I'm simply not bothered about trying to make them more money.

Yes I do know that. It's still a big disincentive to bother earning more money.

Why bother trying harder if the government will take half of anything extra you make?

Higher rate income tax certainly does. Tax bands certainly provide a big disincentive for bothering to get a better job/raise.

Inheritance tax is very unfair. If you are rich enough, you'll plan around it and avoid it. But if you're not rich enough, your kids will not only lose their parents, they'll be sent a bill from the government. Which at best is a tad insensitive.

Add to that the fact that the thresholds for inheritance tax haven't been raised properly, so that someone with a 1 bedroom apartment in London will be subject to inheritance tax, it all seems pretty unfair, and perverse for the government to effectively profit from peoples death.

Why not just go the whole hog and tax all property.

eg you buy a laptop, you have to pay the government a tax each year to keep it.

Why just apply it to houses? May as well just prohibit people from owning property.

Personally, I think such taxes are a massive disincentive for people to do well. As soon as you have enough money to buy a house, you are penalised for it.

Luckily in the UK, we don't have property tax, although we do have other taxes just as disgusting and unfair - stamp duty, inheritance tax, council tax.

Having read some of the blog, it certainly looks like he's a kid with issues. So I'm not surprised the teacher called the university to warn them.

Not sure he really should have called the police, but it's up to him isn't it. But as I said, there's very likely far more to the story than just a blog.

If for example the story was "teacher calls police after student damages property / makes threats / brings knife to school / etc etc, and also shows police his weird ranty blog", then it wouldn't fit with the 'internet hate mob' agenda.

Did you read the blog in question? Are you in possession of the full facts of the case? Do you know those involved? Or have you formed your opinions based on some gossippy trash reporting.

There is almost always far more to stories like this than the reporting has us to believe. That's because the reporting is pushing an agenda. Which internet hate mobs etc absolutely love.

Read the blog. Doesn't seem like the kind of kid I'd like in my university...

pretty douchey to list the schools phone number at the bottom, just so idiot internet hate mobs can phone and abuse the school secretary.

There will always be only 2 relevant sides in politics.

If there were 3 or more, then it means that one sides vote is split, and so will not get a majority.

Unless of course you have some wacky proportional representation system.

Hershey make them under license, but as with all hershey chocolate, they do not add milk or sugar, so it tastes horrible.

You could be right. For most European cities this wouldn't have a terrible effect, as everything is close together and we have things in walking distance.

The US however will be absolutely devastated.

I'm not sure I agree it's a good idea at all.

30 years later, and the electric car market is still miniscule.

There might start to be a market demand for them when petrol is at least twice as expensive as it is now. But there's some wiggle room to reduce the tax on it a lot.