nopriorarrests

yeah, interesting tidbit about Iran and telegram is that russian telegram channels who monetize themselves with ads can easily buy tens of 10k's of fake iran followers to boost their 'social capital'. And since telegram does not allow to check the geolocation of channel followers, some channels are growing from like 3K followers to 100K overnight.

What bothers me is that one can easily enter the realm of complete and total paranoia and disregard every opinion he does not like as a 'foreign state propaganda', be that Russia, China, Iran or some other country.

Removing 5K accounts for a nation of 81M people is like removing 15-20K accounts for the US, so it is basically nothing, IMO. Consider that back in 2017, there was an article stating that "As many as 48 million Twitter accounts aren’t people, says study" [0]. Until we speak about millions of accounts, these 4,779 are nothing in terms of influencing public opinion. I will happily sell a Brooklyn bridge to any authoritarian leader who believes that 5K fake twitter bots that are not followed by real people can make a difference.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-ac...

Again, idk, but I would not consider 5-9 thousands of fake accounts 'a large quantity of propaganda assets'. You can probably buy that amount of accounts for 10K, or 50K USD, or some similar sum. Chump change for a state actor, and commercial twitter farms existed for a better part of this decade, so there are, probably, 10's of millions of fake accounts to buy. Iran can probably rotate them daily for the whole year. (And I'm not sure that these accounts, being fake, can really influence people opinion).

idk man...

"Twitter accounts claiming to be located in Iran and throughout the Middle East pushed out many thousands of tweets under a handful of hashtags, such as #HardRevenge and #DeathToAmerica", well, Iran has population of 81 mln people.

I can easily see 'many thousands of tweets' by legit real supporters of Iran regime, considering that Soleimani was considered a war hero. Honestly, for a country with 81 mln population, 'many thousands' does not sound like a lot. It's not even 'tens of thousands'.

>there’s a ton of shitty jobs out there, and those shitty jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing, automation, made obsolete, etc

Shitty jobs are not must vulnerable, quite opposite in fact. Automating some 400K/year quant job at hedge fund makes morse sense than automatng MCjob that pays 40K/year. More to that, shitty jobs are hardest to automate (we are nowhere close to good janitor robot, for example).

Also, you can not outsource cleaning toilets or hairdessers, but you can software development or building trading models.

Someone being in debt means that someone has an obligation on said debt, so "savings glut" means "debt glut",tautologically.

>Hong Kong isn't hurting

I read some opinions about HK protests, and they were saying, basically, that HK youth has no chance to buy an apartment and live a good middle class life, hence the revolt.

This is something that is not captured in GDP growth metric. To me it makes perfect sense. What is the point of, say, 5% GDP growth if you pay 1/2 of your salary as rent and will never accumulate enough dough for downpayment?

No, I just find it amusing that Masha Gessen is praising some person, who, if relocated to USA while keeping his political views intact, will instantly become alt-right monster and God knows what else (see Covington kids case).

Funny how these things work.

Yes, I'am quoting Bryan MacDonald, sorry if it wasn't clear. And since I speak russian, I can attest that his tweet is factually correct.

The problem here is Gessen uses Zhukov's words to bash Donald Trump, but neglects to mention that Zhukov is a right-winger who supports Trump, and the Tea Party. He's also anti-feminist & new yorker readers would feel differently if they knew these things. It's disingenuous.

https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1203785706860109830

tl;dr - some folks were posting clickbait links to FB, driving audience to their websites which were choke full of ads.

so, basically, doing what every publisher is doing.

Oh,and far-right message was about supporting Israel. Which is, well, you know, very popular far-right trope.

it's not convinient to fully disable charging at home, a lot of folks will revolt. and if you have people charging their cars at night, you always have a chance of swapping a worn out battery for a good one.

problem is, batteries tend to degrade with time, and it's obviously not fair if you will change your worn out battery for an almost new one and only pay for a single charge.

idk man? I explicitly specified the country and time frame? From what I know, if we talk about USA in 1985-1990 (and not USSR in 1935), there were no genocide, no mass poverty or concentration camps. Just education and housing were affordable and music was good.

You had a good chance of getting almost any college degree, good job and ride the happy 90's without student debt and paying off your mortgage for a property that will increase in price at least x2 next decade.

I think my argument boils down to realism.

In a country of 300M people, you will never, ever get rid of some injustice and tragedy. You will always have some rapes, some orphans, people wrongfully jailed, stuff like that. That's just a harsh truth of human existence and I accept it as a mere mortal.

But let's be concerned about an agency abusing it's power and harming 151 people per year. Student loan industry makes millions of people miserable each year, and contribute to "young people in US dying at high rates", but since it's all within the law and said industry not abusing it's power at all, we can just disregard it.

Honestly, it's just a crazy talk to me. Let's abolish ICE and death rate for young adults in US will improve instantly, right? Or maybe let's fix that 1.5T of debt which literally kills mostly young adults?

Late 80's and early 90's as a teenager? Look, you can visit live gigs of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Shotgun Messiah, Bad Religion and such, make some modest money and buy a couple of SF properties? What's not to like about that?

>They might've just lost their jobs, ended up late on rent, or going without medicine, but they were "only just detained."

Yes, and again, how many people default on their student debts each year? Probably x100 times more? And the outcome is more or less the same? And still ICE is the problem?

Honestly, I just don't understand the priorities here, and again, zero sarcasm. Student debt is 1.4 TRILLION dollars, if you dont repay it you end up late on rent, go without medicine, have your wage garnished, but let's revolt around 151 people each year being detained for some time.

Honestly, if I was looking for systematic persecution, I would rather look at student debt crisis, if I correctly understand what "systematic" and "policy failure" means. (English is my second language).

EDIT: "7.5 million student loan borrowers in default and nearly 2 million others seriously behind on their payments", source NYT. Surely 1511 beat 7 500 000 as "systematic" and "policy failure".

EDIT2: And if we speak frankly, "Young people in U.S. dying at high rates" is the reason their crippling 1.4T debt or their crippling fear of being detained by ICE?

From 2007 through 2017. 1511 people, or 151 person per year. And they were just detained, not shot dead or sent to gulags forever.

Now, honest question, no sarcasm.

~100 people die EACH DAY in car crashes in USA. 25 people die annually due to lightning strikes.

Is there any chance to not being depressed with all of that stats? I mean, if 150 detentions per year in nation of 327 million people (0.000045%) make you depressed and terrified, what are your chance to feel yourself content and happy?

>WeWork deflated more than any company in HISTORY.

Cisco went from 77$ per share in 2000 to $10 per share in 2002, while being public (so the value was much more real than WeWork, you could hit the 'sell' button to make it real money in 5 minutes, unlike WeWork equity).

IIRC it was valued around 500 billions in 2000, so it was much larger destruction in value. It still hasn't recovered, with $45 per share right now, never reaching its 2000 peak during these 19 years.

>MAYBE you can feel some emotion for the investors whose money was essentially stolen, by a scam artist?

Honestly, I think investors were quite aware of what kind of business WeWork is. They were hoping to dump the whole hot mess to public markets and walk away, and they failed.

Yeah, that's funny to watch as an original submitter. 30 upvotes and 3 comments in 50 minutes. Seems like people have very little to say about the whole... incident. Other than point out that twitter security practices are not good for established company and you should not talk to police. Which are correct statements, but kinda generic, given the circumstances.

This is a very interesting point, which in fact plays in defense of original article.

Bob Hoffmann, very influential figure in advertising (http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/) likes to point out that there were not that many companies which built their strong brand with online advertising only.

OK, he is old and grumpy dude and he dislikes online ads, but this is a fair point. Once company becomes big enough, it strives to buy a Super Bowl ad spot. And we are well into 10 years of internet being mainstream media, but how many brands were built online only? Not that much, and I'm saying it as "online ads work", kind of guy.

Hey Jesse,

I spent 6 years working in ad-tech, and I was researching the incrementality effect of ads, selection bias and stuff like that for last 3 years. I want to let you know that your article is good. Online advertising is not a bubble, but your article perfectly explains why it is much harder than it seems.

>It's the same in online marketing, you often target people who are searching for say a pair of shoes.

This is funny, because on HN you often see complaints about online advertising being horrifically bad because "it suggests me the products I have zero interest in", hence "online advertising sucks".

But that's the whole point! These people are complaining that they are not getting pizza coupons when they are entering pizzeria!

If it will suggest you something you are interested in already, chances are, you will buy it anyway. And if you will be suggested something strange and you will buy it, it will be incremental customer and incremental sale, and you might even become a regular client.

>I like seeing community-based, high density housing with shared kitchens and bathrooms

In soviet russia, kommunalki host you (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment)

GoFundMe is a charity platform. How can p2p microloan platform replace it? So I'll make a micro loan fully know it will never be repaid?

Okay lets say I know in advance that in 3 days from now Trump will tweet something that will affect S&P500 in material way. I want to profit from it.

Why should I establish my position in a single huge trade, instead of slow accumulation thru the whole trading session? Do I really want to trigger some alarm in SEC system?

When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything.

G.K. Chesterton, circa 1924

>This has caused me to come to the conclusion that people aren't aware of the trade-offs or what is going on.

But what exactly is going on? It's not like google going to blackmail you for 10K USD in cash, single payment please, once it will learn that you are going to the same pub and spend 2 hours there daily, "or we will let your boss know".

It will show you more relevant ads, right. But do you really expect an average person to be scared by this?

Oracle fits this description nicely. :)