LinkedIn needs to work on pervasive phishing and identity theft. I recently found out about an account that copied my profile photo, name, and CV information and used that to connect to 500+ people at my company and elsewhere, using my reputation to pitch people on some blockchain diamond Ponzi scheme. The account has been shut down, but I have no idea if the connections have been warned that this was a fake account trying to scam them, who the account had connected to, and if anyone was victimized. Speaking with coworkers, these kinds of scams are common. It doesn't seem like there is even a basic automated check during user signup to see if the account is impersonating someone else who is already in the system.
I majored in creative writing, but the MFA career path looked like a pyramid scheme, so I switched to web development. After working in the field for several years, I started running the technical side of a local leaks platform called BayLeaks. (It's defunct now, but was cutting edge at the time, basically the third SecureDrop instance after The New Yorker and Wired.) I got more involved in the research and writing side, since it turned out the big problem in journalism wasn't a lack of technology, it was a lack of time and money to do research.
Eventually, I made the switch to full-time freelance investigative reporting. It was hugely rewarding at a personal level and made a positive impact on people's lives, but it was also a financial catastrophe that I'm still paying for. I could no longer justify as I was approaching my 30s and planning to get married.
I switched back to programming, eventually landed my current full-time job doing blockchain stuff, and really enjoy it. I miss investigative reporting, but still do a bit of research for activist friends in my free time. Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write. Given the dire economics of journalism, making a bunch of tech money to subsidize a publication would be more impactful than slogging away in poverty on my own.
There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency. I think that tax dollars should be set aside to fund journalism, since journalism ultimately saves money for everyone. I don't see any other big solutions that would solve this systemic problem. We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.
We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.
What makes you think the rich have better info? Most people with money read the Economist, which has real reporters, but anybody can get that. There's the Bloomberg terminal, but that just gets you news before it hits Bloomberg Business Week. "Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg terminal".
There are expensive newsletters which cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. They're devoted to very narrow subjects. If you really need to know what's going in in offshore scams, get Offshore Alert. For oil, there's Platt's, which is now part of S&P. For ports, there's the Journal of Commerce. For security issues, Kroll has some expensive info services, but they're mostly repackaged content from elsewhere. There's the good old Dines Letter from James Dines, the senior gold bug. (Dines is always saying "the sky is falling in this specific area", and he's often right.) And there's Hulbert Financial Digest, which rates all the other newsletters.
It's more about knowing where to look. It takes some money, but not a whole lot.
You can pay financial advisers, but as a group, after fees, they underperform index funds.
On the other hand, there are too many activist journalists. People whose main goal is not to report the news but to push a political or social agenda. I particularly despise the ones that do smear attacks. I've been burned too many times by trusting these "journalists" that if a stranger tells me they're a journalist then I trust them less than I did before knowing that.
The risk with the government paying the media is that the media stops being independent from the government. Some of that media is basically going to be propaganda for the government that's funded by taxpayers. But, if journalists were paid by taxes then perhaps we would get less clickbait. I'm not sure how it would affect activist journalism though. I'm afraid it might even increase it.
>There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency.
Never considered it, but it seems to make a lot of sense. Would you mind pointing me to the evidence about this you mentioned?
"Local newspapers hold their governments accountable. We examine the effect of local newspaper closures on public finance for local governments. Following a newspaper closure, we find municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points in the long run. Identification tests illustrate that these results are not being driven by deteriorating local economic conditions. The loss of monitoring that results from newspaper closures is associated with increased government inefficiencies, including higher likelihoods of costly advance refundings and negotiated issues, and higher government wages, employees, and tax revenues."
The first newspapers were expensive niche publications that provided businesspeople, politicians, and other elites with the information they needed. Mass market newspapers (and ultimately the mass market news industry) relied on advertising dollars to subsidize the costs of news production. With advertising dollars moving away from news production, there is no longer enough incentive to produce news for the average person. There has to be some subsidy in place to pay for news that regular people can't pay for. This is particularly bad in local markets, where news deserts are spreading. Without beat reporters, there's no way to know basic facts about what's going on around you.
Mass market news allowed for the professionalization of journalism, with a set of ethics that demanded (attempts at) objectivity. With mass market news dying, there isn't enough money to support a large professional journalism class. In its absence, we are left with propagandists that publish publicly for free or at discounted rates and consultants that publish objective information privately at high rates that only businesses, politicians, or the wealthy can afford.
What you are forgetting is that advertising is moving away because readers are. People came for the value they are no longer getting. Advertisers are just the result of that
Not OP but I'll try: have you ever looked at the massive consolidations that happen in the news space? A couple of truly independent but small papers and public TV/radio stations remain, but the rest? Owned by Murdoch, Sinclair, Axel Springer and a couple other billionaires.
Coincidentally or not, Murdoch/Sinclair/Springer media massively lean towards the right/hardcore conservative edge, which basically means that the population is fed a heavy bias in news (and some programs don't even deserve that name anymore, they're outright propaganda). And these media conglomerates are those defining current politics, simply because of their massive reach capability.
Media needs to be broken up if democracy is to survive - and similar with entertainment, given that Disney basically owns all major movie franchises now.
You have conveniently neglected to mention all the news outlets with obvious left wing leanings, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, The Atlantic, Vice, Vox, etc. The media landscape is actually pretty well balanced, which isn’t surprising, given that the population’s political orientation is also pretty well balanced.
That's the point: they have left leanings. None of them is advocating full blown socialism, goes for gun bans, or a single-payer healthcare system with private insurance middlemen cut out of the picture.
The so-called "conservative" media however? Just look at how they portrait immigrants, that's no longer just leanings, that's propaganda.
In addition, for Germany the hardcore-conservative BILD paper (owned by Axel Springer) is still the most powerful paper given its circulation of 1.4M daily. The centrist-liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung follows wide after the BILD at 338k daily, followed by conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine with 241k [1]. By reach, the right/"conservatives" massively dominate.
I’m not German, so I can’t speak to the German media landscape. I’m American, though, and to portray the media landscape in the US as right dominated is insane. Literally every single prestigious media and cultural institution is dominated by the left in this country. Insane views on the right regularly get deplatformed on facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, whereas insane left wing views are ignored. Left wing causes have a chorus of support from famous celebrities, musicians, and actors. Right wing views might have some support from random C-list celebrities or country music stars.
> Insane views on the right regularly get deplatformed on facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, whereas insane left wing views are ignored.
Yeah and then do show me please where the "insane left wing" advocates for conspiracy crap such as the "great replacement" or denies the Holocaust. There's a reason the right wings get deplatformed and the left wings don't, simply because the left wings don't devolve to inhumanity.
> Right wing views might have some support from random C-list celebrities or country music stars.
... and from the President of the United States as well as half of Congress. Yeah, "some support". Bannon literally ended up as consultant in the White House.
> because the left wings don't devolve to inhumanity
What would you call what happened in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, then?
And I agree that the right has political power. That’s because the population is split pretty evenly between right and left. I wasn’t talking about that, though, I was talking about media and cultural institutions. Popular and, especially, prestigious culture is dominated by the left in the US. For instance, a popular late night host in this country referred to the president’s mouth as “Putin’s cock holster” and still has a job. If someone had said that about Hilary Clinton, they would have been fired the next day.
>Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write.
look me up when you're ready. i've wanted to do something like this for a while, but of course the money aspect is always the sticking point.
Individuals funding things like this actually seems like a valid path forward. Look at other industries where the same thing is happening. When appeasing shareholders or advertisers isn't priority one, it's easier to maintain quality and value.
BayLeaks partnered with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, before it went under. My co-founder was a long-time San Francisco journalist and I was able to collaborate with her on several stories and get introductions to journalists and editors for stories I was doing independently. But of course, you could always just investigate stuff, find the email of an editor at an outlet that seems to publish that kind of thing, and write an email pitch. If they're interested, you send your story, and they'll tell you how much they would pay to publish with them.
I just pinged you on Twitter, @jdshutt. I know a lawyer who specializes in tax law and is very interested in cryptocurrencies. If you want to get in touch with her, you can reach me at john.d.shutt@gmail.com and I'll send her e-mail.
I'm on board with everyone saying that you need to talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later, and should work with someone who knows the area.
Tax law isn't very relevant here; the primary areas of concern are federal money transmission laws and criminal state and federal anti-laundering laws.
Should Obama be held responsible for the actions of his Naval officers if he declares we should pursue missile strikes in Syria?
I mean, saying something and then your fans going overboard is one thing. But everytime 'dickwolves' gets mentioned the fanatics pull out the big guns again... maybe at some point Gabe and Tycho should anticipate that women out there will be the target of those same fanatics if they push the D.W. button again?
If I say something that offends a certain religion and those people burn down a building in response, and I knew they would do that, am I responsible for that?
I used to think so -- if I didn't do X then bad thing Y wouldn't happen, so I could stop it, right? -- but it was some liberal friends of mine who convinced me otherwise. All you can be responsible for is yourself.
Point taken, and I actually try to preach that mantra myself. But I agree with jlgreco about the greater credibility our law seems to give to public figures with regard to incitement.
Certainly it's a problem I'm glad that I don't have to worry about, and I feel bad for Gabe in that regard just like I tend to pity many celebrity figures who just want their privacy back. :-/
This is a nice piece of self-help advice, but it's a self-delusory trick to reduce the level of mental insanity that comes from a full acknowledgement of responsibility.
Keep in mind that you're presuming a direct chain of cause and effect from your offensive words to the building-burning. When there isn't such a direct chain, then you have a much less direct responsibility. Which is the point. The strength of your agency in the causality is precisely what obligates you to make a meaningful decision.
If you didn't know that committing a diff would result in someone losing all their money, then it's not really your fault. But if you did, then it is.
It's liberalism's most detestable idiocy that everyone really is an island unto themselves and fuck the promontory that sinks into the sea. If you ever speak to anyone with the intent of persuading them at all, even if it's an evangelical-style "if only you'd read the Bible, you'd recognize that Jesus is your savior" except with facts and figures, you're somewhat responsible for the consequences of that persuasion.
I'm not convinced that we can map the ethics used with situations involving the military chain of command to situations involving informal mobs.
Now, we still have concepts like "inciting imminent lawless action" that are fairly non-controversial, so clearly there is at least some sense of blaming people who tell others to go make a mess, but I don't think that is nearly as clear-cut as your example.
Hi, HN! I'm a full-stack web developer, looking to take on interesting freelance projects. I enjoy using Ruby, Rails, PostgreSQL, SASS, RSpec, and CoffeeScript/jQuery, but I always try to find the best tools for the job at hand. Recent projects of mine include a GitHub recommendations service and a rewrite of the Open Library gem.
I think (2) is more likely at this point. There's only so much a market will take before it tanks and stays down for months. This kind of market (along with porn and gambling) is a great target for botnet controllers trying to make a buck.
You also have to think about tracking on the readers' side of things. If you read something on Facebook or Google+, you can count on that being tracked and added to that system's profile of you. If you read something on a blog, and block things like Google Analytics, it's harder to passively track.
Which again makes me wonder why the tech world has been a week of adulation of Aaron Swartz, whose two greatest accomplishments (if you follow the lede of every story about him) were that he was pushed on the Reddit founders by PG after his own project failed (then exiting before them), and that he was one of a dozen plus people who authored a revision to a brutishly simplistic RSS 1.0 spec, his single celebrated attribute being his age.
Is that honestly all you took away from the stories about him? The only way I could see someone forming this opinion is if they had read only the lede of a piece about him before closing the tab.
The only way I could see someone forming this opinion is if they had read only the lede of a piece about him before closing the tab.
I was speaking specifically to those things that have been singled out as the items that make his story so newsworthy (the RSS one being a particularly odd one, the history completely distorted in the retelling for the purposes of narrative invention). I am fully aware of the various initiatives that Aaron was involved with.
The distortion around his contribution to RSS is strongest in mainstream news articles written by people who don't really understand the history. When you read pieces by people in technology, activist, and art circles, especially people who actually knew and worked with him, you find many other projects he created or contributed to. And if you're fully aware of that, I think it's disingenuous to point to what a confused journalist thinks Aaron Swartz did and act like that's the full story.
If he was advocate for more open access to government records, why is it surprising that he would be concerned about the Aaron Swartz case? I agree that this letter could be seen as part a larger battle between Republicans and the Obama DoJ, but does that mean that questions about Aaron Swartz' prosecution are only valid if they come from Democrats?
This is silly and disingenuous partisanship. It isn't at all a "anti-republicans" thing in his comment. It is a "hey this guy may be doing this good thing, but don't go about declaring him 'a good guy strictly on our side' (for whatever side that happens to be), he's done these other things that a lot of people are against". Its a sanity check.
Let's repost tptacek's comments, to see how partisan they are:
>"Expect to see lots of superficial genuflection from Republicans towards the Swartz case; the GOP is in a constant low-grade conflict with the Democratic DoJ."
Any show of support of the GOP for Aaron Swartz is "superficial genuflection" driven by partisan conflict. Doubtless, Democratic support would be considered genuine.
>"Here, let me put it this way: what do you honestly think Aaron Swartz would think about this clown using his name to score political points?"
A Senator with a history of support for Open Access is a "clown" that is so odious that Aaron would be upset to have his support.
This is partisanship at its worst. tptacek is dehumanizing Republicans in a way that kills rational thought. A Republican can't even do something tptacek agrees with without receiving his scorn.
What's reasonable to me is: not putting any politician on a pedestal. They all suck for a lot of reasons.
Unfortunately, you see it on web forums all the time that people have no medium or long term memories: basically they see some politician agreeing with them on some topic and there is much raving about how awesome that person is. Two weeks later, the same politician is against the prevalent view on some other topic, and they are the devil incarnate.
Further there is a trend in these discussions to turn everything into "this guy is from this party, so that party is on my side!" craziness, and piles of confirmation bias start happening.
So I see comments on how various parties will spin any event and posture themselves towards it, with references to a larger political climate - such as the one you quoted first - not as "anti-$PARTY" or "hate", but as a reminder that the politicians are always playing, a "here is the game now" statement.
Similarly, regarding your second quote, calling a politician a clown, is not anti republican anything. The senator has a history of open access, but also has a questionable history in larger civil liberties contexts. The senator posturing himself as a champion of Aaron Swartz because of the open access issue, is just that. We've seen a lot of stuff lately reminding us of Aaron's stance on, e.g. Chomsky and the concept of manufactured consent. This politician is in fact doing what Aaron didn't like in the manufactured consent game. It is a reasonable statement to point it out.
Note: when the framing of this as "Obama's DOJ" and other types of strong political gaming that will occur around this, no one will mention Ortiz has been a US Attorney since 1997, and therefore doing this sort of action for many administrations. It will turn into a discussion of which party is responsible, rather than a reasonable discussion about what should be done about an actual problem.
In this context, it is reasonable for anyone who wants to address the problem, rather than the politics, to take steps in discussions like this to remind everyone that the person in question may in fact agree with them on this issue, but they, and the party they represent certainly don't agree on every issue. This is a giant problem - the thinking that any party agrees whole-heartedly with your stances, or that any given politician has the right answers to all problems.
Finally it should be noted that tptacek gets accused of hating just about every single group that exists at some point. It seems he is in that rare place of "he thinks for himself", and so gets these sorts of "super partisan" accusations about hating the democrats a lot too. Isn't it great when your knee jerk defense of your chosen favorites causes you to attack someone who regularly gets attacked for being too much on your side?
I'm an issues guy, not a party guy. When a politician does something good, I like that. Even if I don't normally agree with them, that means I have the opportunity to build a larger, more effective coalition towards my goal.
For you and tptacek, when a politician does something good, that's a bad thing because they are trying to dupe us. I'm not a Chomskyite, so I can't twist my brain in those kind of knots.
I never said I was a Chomskyite. Nor did I say it was a bad thing. You are being disingenuous. I was merely supporting the idea of being an issues person, not lionizing any politician on a single stance of theirs. But whatever, you would rather see me and apparently tptacek (although we are not on the same side about a lot of things either, I've gone toe-to-toe with him on this forum before), as enemies rather than people who support an issue you also support. It's actually funny how hypocritical your statement is - you say you're an issues guy, but then demonize people who are saying "yeah support this politician on this issue, but be careful of their stance on other issues, and notice their general behavior in case they do the politician thing and subtly change what they say".
Basically, I have no idea how you can claim to be an issues guy, but attack people for being partisan when they warn people to be cognizant of all issues when supporting a single politician. To build a coalition you need to be careful that side effects of the "pro my issue" people aren't "against my other issues".
Your post is very rude. I don't always agree with 'tptacek or anyone else, even some of my own past comments. However, I have seen enough of his comments to know I'd be happy to have a beer with the man. If Thomas is a nutjob in your mind and sparrows are crazy, I can't begin to imagine how you might describe some of my perspectives.
It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could express themselves civilly and not be attacked.
It would be lovely if HN could be a place where people could rise above their petty self interests and help the community move forward. Thomas is at the wrong end of this spectrum.
TheAmazingIdiot is correct BTW. Its hard to imagine Thomas posting his ridiculous views unless he is a paid shill. Probably on your team.
His point is that the Obama administration actually did revamp the federal FOIA policy and got no credit for it, I think. But that's kind of by-the-by.
That wasn't my point...and while Obama has opened some new doors, the thinking in the journalism community is that his administration is actually more closed when it comes to raw request numbers:
This is of course a quantitative measure...but given that Obama wrote a very direct order to officials to err on the side of openness, it's striking that that order is being ignored so casually...I don't think it's hard to make a case that the culture of the bureaucracy is not particularly mindful of openness.
Yeah, I was just meandering. The parent post had argued that this was little more than a hypocritical political ploy. I was saying, 'probably', because there's not much to politically gain from it other than to give the DOJ a black eye and because, I guess I just see Swartz as still being a "niche" issue to most people outside of the tech/academic senator.
But I thought it was fair to point out that Cornyn is no fairweather public-records fan. But of course, Swartz's JSTOR incident was not just a case of open-access (as it was in the PACER case). There's enough nuance here that I would've just assumed that a senator of Conryn's level would leave it be as there are many other political shitstorms going on (gun control, debt ceiling, etc etc)
The Internet Archive, probably. They have a long-term view toward preserving Internet content, and the resources to support permanent memorials would be negligible for them. It would be similar to a university library preserving the papers of an important writer. I can't imagine a more appropriate custodian.
