Google creates world's most powerful computer, NASA 'accidentally reveals' - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/usa/469325-google-quantum-computer-reports/ <comment><USER2> @dang

The Fortune article at least contains a bit more detail from the supposed paper.

[https://fortune.com/2019/09/20/google-claims-quantum- suprema...](https://fortune.com/2019/09/20/google-claims-quantum-supremacy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Article mentions the paper has been taken down. Has anyone found a copy? Search turns up zilch.

<comment><USER4> Imperfectly cached by Bing:

Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor

[http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%2220190030475%22&d=5027660...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%2220190030475%22&d=5027660531763561&mkt=en- US&setlang=en-US&w=dln7VmOcXbLuUMYsBmteH8_-znI5bROK)

\---

EDIT: Just now I saw this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043659)

The full paper: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/19lv8p1fB47z1pEZVlfDXhop082L...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/19lv8p1fB47z1pEZVlfDXhop082Lc- kdD/view)

Supplementary information for "Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor"

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vReCUoN9oOGGybt2TbzJBdPyALa...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vReCUoN9oOGGybt2TbzJBdPyALafyUND/view)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They accidentally revealed it without first doing peer reviews on it. Quantum computers are going to be expensive and faster than Bitwize computers.</comment>


The NSA comes recruiting - <AUTHOR> http://mobandmultitude.com/2013/07/02/the-nsa-comes-recruiting/

<comment><USER2> This was a fun read and it seams like many people could just DDoS the recruiting efforts of the NSA and CIA by showing up to recruiting sessions and playing devil's advocates. If you are well informed and good at internet arguing, you are well equipped to attend these recruiting sessions.

At the very least it would plant the seeds of cognitive dissonance in the minds of everyone recruiting for the NSA and CIA. e.g. "Why do so many of the citizens we are trying to protect not agree with our decision to do a job where we trade liberty for security?"

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh my, those NSA employees sure did have a hard time justifying their work as "apolitical" in front of such enlightened students.

Very well argued by the students! This will definitely leave a mark that will last in the minds of these two NSA employees.

Highly recommended that you listen to the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating. It is encouraging to see students to so intelligently rebuke the NSA for its actions. I don't think I myself could have responded so aptly them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Brilliant. I remember reading on HN some comments a while ago (long before PRISM) about refusing jobs at the NSA or being willing to help companies develop surveillance software and such, and some were say that "why would they refuse the jobs? It's not like it will make a difference. Others will just take the job instead".

Maybe, but it's the same with protesting and boycotting. The more opposition, the better, and every little bit helps to turn things around.

When they come to recruit you next time, do what these students did, shame them in public for lying and abusing their power, and refuse to work for them. Think of it as "taking a stand" for protecting your own rights, by refusing to be part of the group of people that is making the country worse.</comment>


Boards in Asana - <AUTHOR> https://blog.asana.com/2016/11/introducing-boards/ <comment><USER2> This Trello-like design is really good for visually tracking tasks in multiple projects. But I think the core problem of Asana losing users is about its performance. As a web-based platform, Asana's speed is slow enough to make me feel annoyed. When I tested it on Safari, it's even worse.

<comment><USER3> I'm an engineer at Asana. Trust me, they're full aware that performance is the #1 problem with Asana right now.

The major engineering focus at Asana right now is performance. It has been for a while and they're just starting to roll things out with the new, faster, backend and UI. I think you'll start to see significant improvements soon as the investments they've been making start to roll out. It's already started rolling out to some customers, and the API updates just got turned[1], on for example. Those changes are going to be making it into the UI soon.

If you don't like Asana performance, give it a few months and check back or keep an eye on their blog[2]. Big changes are coming on that front.

[1] [https://asana.com/developers/feed/asana-fast-api-open- beta](https://asana.com/developers/feed/asana-fast-api-open-beta) [2] [https://blog.asana.com/](https://blog.asana.com/)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for informing us about this. This gives me hope! I've seen Asana change UI multiple times in the past few years when all I want is for them to fix the following (in case you're listening):

\- Performance: Lower resource usage and much faster loading of tasks from external links (like from emails).

\- Get rid of the random "disconnected / reconnecting" notifications which disable the entire app for a few seconds.

\- Allow adding attachments by drag-and-drop.

\- Sometimes attachments don't preview till you reload the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've been using Asana for a year now, and once you get the hang of it, it's really super efficient. But I wish Boards where a visualisation on a list rather of a new object, where we now have to decide for each project wether to use the list or board format. I'd love to have a system that allowed you to switch between both.

And I'll echo the comments about Asana being to resource greedy. A combination of appear.in + asana will quickly bring chrome on its knee on my macbook pro, to the point that I'll sometime load it on my phone during meetings to avoid straining my machine....

<comment><USER6> Youtrack is an unsung hero in this space. It can easily be customized to a wide variety of workflows, and lets you view the same tickets as boards or lists. Plus, the Jetbrains team are helpful and responsive to feature requests.

<comment><USER7> I use Youtrack at work and it suffers from being WAY too configurable, to the point that nobody uses it because you have to click SO MUCH to do anything.

Every developer we hire has to sit and watch 10mins of videos so they know how to use it, yet every other issue track I've used has been immediately obvious as to how it is used.

It does some really annoying things too, like hijack the history state of your browser, so pressing back and forward doesn't work as you'd expect (they have their own back button in the app, you're "supposed" to use that).

<comment><USER6> You might have an old version; browser history works fine in version 7.

You have to click far less than with asana or jira, so I don't know how you guys have it set up, but it's far from stock. Click to board (or set board as default view), filter, move tickets. That's all there is to it.

It's leagues more efficient to use than jira.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Feature wise... good step for Asana. They now have a feature that Basecamp doesn't offer... big step for them!

Usability... slow load, sluggish drag... not loving it.

UX... I freakin' hate it when boards don't show label names. I'm supposed to know what all my labels are via color? No way, what's this orange, vs slightly darker orange?

Gonna stick with GitHub and ZenHub... and Unito for clients that just have to have Asana.

* ZenHub - Agile GitHub Project Management Software || [https://www.zenhub.com/](https://www.zenhub.com/)

* Unito - Connect your project management tools and become your team's collaboration hero || [https://unito.io/](https://unito.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> So how many places do I need to manage my boards now? Trello, GitHub, and now Asana as well? Why doesn't Slack add this feature while we're at it?

</comment><comment><USER10> Five years ago I loved asana for its simplicity. I tried it again maybe a year ago and was shocked at how unfamiliar it felt. Haven't gone back. Just use pen and Paper now.

<comment><USER11> When you say paper, do you mean Dropbox Paper?

<comment><USER12> Not sure if you're joking but given the context ("pen and paper") I'm pretty sure parent meant physical paper.

<comment><USER11> i m only half joking, because the words "Paper" is capitalized in the parent's comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have tried rather hard to get Asana going for a small team. This was about 2 years ago. I did not find it very attractive. At that time, the inability to get all the tasks across projects in a single page was frustrating. Is there anyone who has found Asana an addition over JIRA, for example? A convincing explanation would be very helpful.

<comment><USER14> Our cross-functional marketing team straddles Trello, Asana, and misc. docs in Google Drive. I've found that the creatives on the team (writers, designers, etc.) all hate Asana, but they also don't necessarily love Trello.

So I'm hunting for a system that is visually simple and can take only a few seconds to learn and use. I just came across DaPulse (no affiliation) and the screenshots and video seem interesting, but I need to play with it to see if it supports the various things we need (multiple milestones, dependencies, owners, and a good way of rolling that up to an executive dashboard that gets rid of all the minutiae). Also, that is one of the worst brand names I've seen in a while, but hey, if it works who cares.

The problem with project management tools is that if you can't get a team to use them religiously, they can do more harm than good. The second things start getting sent in email or posted in Slack and NOT captured in the tool, things break down. And if people forget to check things in the tool to stay on top of their notifications, items needing responses, etc. and update their respective pieces, then you might as well use nothing.

<comment><USER15> Nothing is simpler to learn than Trello!

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I have to agree with this.

I have a long-term client who is a smart guy but is basically a bit averse to learning new technology - he's good with Excel from a previous time in his life, but feels now like his skills are better used elsewhere (which is not an unreasonable position to be in, sometimes). We tried him with Pivotal Tracker, and he did make the effort to use it, somewhat, but it never meshed well with how he wanted to work and he kept doing odd things like creating additional empty tasks as "dividers", which was infuriating. Then we tried him with Jira - he never got anywhere with it; too much UI, too many tabs, too many things to fill in, and the hour-long walkthrough I tried to do was just too much listening.

Finally, entirely independently of me, he started using Trello. He got it immediately, with no assistance, and loves it - he even uses it for non-work things now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am happy to see this. I worked on a series of projects about 2 years ago where the company used Asana.

It is probably just because of the way I think, and the way I go about solving problems, but I felt Asana (original) was ... underwhelming to say the least.

Trello I immediately fell in love with when I learned about it, and have used it a ton now and still have the same feelings about it to this day.

</comment><comment><USER18> Serious question: How does this make it to the front page?

Unless I missed something, it's a basic feature, and doesn't seem even remotely innovative.

<comment><USER19> Technically, because enough people upvote it, up to a level that makes it visible on the front page.

And it appears that this feature, although not new in the world of Trello, Microsoft Teams, GitLab cards, is new for Asana: "With this initial version of Boards, visual thinkers can now organize and track their work from within Asana."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I might try Asana again now that they have this feature. My company is about to move away from zenhub/github issues to jira but i am looking for decent alternatives. I hate trello, and asana always seemed feature-bloated + i hate their new UI.

Any future plans to open source Luna ?

<comment><USER12> A few people recommended clubhouse.io in this thread, so that might be one to look at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Like the new functionality (we use Asana across our company), but I wish it wasn't a separate project type. Seems like a no-brainer to just use section headers as columns and then be able to flip between the text-based version and a board-based system.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the design, but have they fixed the other issues? The UX is awful to use, the search hardly finds things I'm interested in and opaque to filter, and I have a recurring task that has been going for a year and I cannot figure out how to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Happy they're diving into boards. Just tried it out and it's pretty barebones. But that's okay, it'll grow.

The big issue though is Asana still has a big design & usability problem, which is especially pronounced in comparison with their new competitor Trello.

Visually, Asana has exceedingly low contrast between items and favors shades of very light grey, which is only made worse with small fonts and icons, and non-hidpi displays. Greyscale UIs are okay if color is used sparingly on key actions, but even the colors don't make much sense - yellow upgrade button, red/orange project adder (which, unlike in the blog post, doesn't even present me with the option to add boards), pink (in my case) user presence circle, blue dot for a task mark. It's all kind of a jumble when starting out, and the most straightforward action (add a task) is entirely invisible until mousing over.

The info hierarchy is also totally puzzling in Asana - what is an entirely different project(? not sure the lingo) versus a within-project 'project' versus todos and other stuff in there. They're all jumbled together, unlabeled, in both top nav and user presence menu, and it makes me think twice before doing something like inviting a collaborator (because I don't know what view I'm inviting them to). Plus the tasks/inbox/dashboard tabs then have sub tabs in them that don't make much sense as to why they're there. And view changes are slow. It looks like an attempt at simplicity that misses the mark on which things to simplify.

Meanwhile Trello delineates the various hierarchies (boards, lists, cards) very well. Trello has clear distinction between cross-board stuff situated in the top nav (boards, search, trello logo, user presence), followed by within- board contents in the second to top nav (board name, star, privacy, and link for menu), followed by lists and cards. Trello also has a board index where you can see all your boards and which ones are part of which organizations.

To charitably interpret this, I'd say that Trello is designed to support many boards for different things, whereas Asana's interface is built around a single main project(?), and doesn't scale well to many unrelated projects. Trello has a low barrier to entry but lacks detailed collaborative project management tools out of the box, and focuses on an ecosystem of powerups, where Asana has more features but you're stuck with all of them and has high initial cognitive load.

This means Trello is a good tool for casual usage, and can scale to some degree of complex projects. Asana looks like it is made for complex projects run in a particular way with lots of information density, but introduces too many concepts and lays them out too haphazardly to be useful for casual projects or casual usage. I think that introduces a big friction point for adoption across teams, as it doesn't do service to users that aren't interacting with the tool super frequently. I guess another way to put it is Asana feels enterprise-y in execution. Meanwhile Trello feels like a true consumer product, and like Slack, is part of a breed of consumer-to-enterprise plays that are nailing it by starting simple.

I really like that Asana is acknowledging in this post that there are many different processes users adopt to tackle projects, as overly opinionated designs in the productivity space will limit addressable market significantly. Adding more views & workflows that all are tied to your data is great. Wish the UI/UX were a lot better.

<comment><USER5> > "Asana looks like it is made for complex projects run in a particular way > with lots of information density, but introduces too many concepts and lays > them out too haphazardly to be useful for casual projects or casual usage. "

This feels very true to me. A big part of becoming effective with Asana for us was deciding which concepts to use, and how (like: decide what are sections for, and stick to it), which we don't (like conversations).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We're considering making the jump from Jira. Has anyone else done this? How did it go? I especially wonder how well Asana deals with estimating tasks.

<comment><USER25> Most likely Asana will be too simple for you then. For example, you can't assign more that two people on a task and estimates are just custom fields that are not so ingrained into the system, so you'll have troubles with reports.

<comment><USER26> > For example, you can't assign more that two people on a task

You can add as many people as you want at the project level but always assumed their philosophy was that that one person owns/completes individuals tasks/sub-tasks.

<comment><USER25> This is just a wishful thinking that does not reflect real life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Borrowing Ideas from Trello, it seems.

<comment><USER28> "Borrowing" like Instagram "borrowed" stories from Snapchat...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Avaza has had really nice task Kanban & List views for a long time. It has the combined functionality of Asana + Trello + Harvest + Freshbooks in one seamless product.

</comment><comment><USER30> Notion is going to everybody's lunch! [https://notion.so](https://notion.so)

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone noticed [http://teambition.com](http://teambition.com) ?

</comment><comment><USER32> Are they just now getting a kanban board? Or M I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER33> Asana+Trello

</comment><comment><USER34> Very bad sign when you start copying other companies in your space.

<comment><USER2> Disagree. Take Apple copied Android's drop down notification as the best example. And Apple did not go down after that.

<comment><USER35> Apple _is_ going down!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Have you heard about www.paymoapp.com - they have boards for quite a long time now, also Gantt is in private beta. The speed is quite good. I am using it for more than 2 years now.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there websites that use the Pay What You Like model? - <AUTHOR> Hi, are there any SaaS / websites that have a Pay as you feel model for pricing?
I'm running a free service and want to implement some kind of sustainability if not income. Donation links generally don't work, Patreon seems good but is more about the person, rather than the service. Crowdfunding works but is about short term goals and rewards. I'm not thinking of making my service freemium - all users would have the same features. Perhaps donors could have more space for data and a badge. To me, a pay as you feel model would mean that each user would have to consciously specify some kind of value, even if it's zero, to use the system. I'm also keen on mandating that users should be able to pay nothing to use it.
So I'm wondering if there are other sites out there that run a kind of Pay As You Feel, even zero model? Does it work and how? <comment><USER2> codesandbox.io uses Patreon with a 'pay what you want' model and it works pretty well.</comment>


On Being Childish; An Apology - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/10/on-being-childish-an-apology/

<comment><USER2> I'm missing something - why is he apologising? Was anyone really offended by his calling Stallman "childish"? His last post seemed pretty reasonable, it's not like it was an incoherent rant.

<comment><USER3> It's not clear. What Ubuntu did is a serious issue that merits discussion. Dropping a Stallman bomb on the situation just gets people eye-rolling so badly they can't bother to care. He's not one to take a soft tact even if that's the best way to get results.</comment></comment>


Show HN: PeggSite - Something We Had To Build - <AUTHOR> http://kirklove.tumblr.com/post/64960875791/peggsite-something-we-had-to-build-today

<comment><USER2> It sounds like a really good idea. I was ready to sign up, then I read the TOS and just can't do it.

I understand the reason that sites need to be indemnified in order to display my content on the site. But, allowing an unrestricted, perpetual license to my content (even after I close my account) to the site, AND all other users, is crazy.

If the product and service is good, offer it with those TOS removed, and I'll pay for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback. Right now the TOS are basically stock, so we have something at launch (lawyers!). We can modify them at any time so welcome input and I'll be sure to talk to them about striking such language. Thanks again.</comment></comment>


Lyft Burning Cash on the Way to $500M Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/18/lyft-burning-cash-on-the-way-to-500-billion-round/ <comment><USER2> In Austin they've had a 50% off promotion for several months straight now. They keep claiming it's going to expire only to extend it at the last minute. I'm curious if they're doing this in other cities too to try to promote growth.

I'm curious how this strategy will work long term - it's obviously not sustainable, and I have to imagine they'll lose a large number of customers as soon as they stop the promotion as they're simply more expensive than Uber. I'm happy to use the discount right now, but I can't imagine I'll continue to use them afterwards as Uber costs less.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been really disappointed with Lyft, even as I've used it for over 100 rides. The driver quality has been getting worse and worse. I got an email months ago telling me that I had gotten enough rides to be in the top 10% and be a part of "Lyft Nation", and then never heard about that again. And today they tried to get me to buy Justin Bieber music of all things, right from the app.

So I downloaded Uber today. I really wanted to like you Lyft, but your problems are of your own doing.

<comment><USER4> Uber is even worse. And they pay their drivers worse and seem to be a worse company to work for.

But I do agree - I've used it over 200 times in the last year and I've been giving a lot more non-5 star ratings lately. Drivers who are dangerous.. Drivers who don't pay attention to their GPS.. Drivers who fiddle with their phone while driving.. Drivers who plain miss me and cancel the ride.

I started using Lyft because I didn't want my drivers to drive like cabbies (as Uber drivers often felt like).. maybe that's simply something you can't expect in this market for very long.</comment></comment>


GitHub Turned into an Enterprise Under Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> I was requested to remove a training file from my Deep Learning Language detection repo (only 64 stars but still). The repo used Deep Learning to detect programming language of a file or snippet. The files and snippets were harvested from public files and snippets of github and stackoverflow. The repo was taken down even after I removed the file from the git history. More info and screenshots here: https://twitter.com/aliostad/status/1222440190821781506?s=20 <comment><USER2> The reason you couldn't delete the blob, is because someone forked your repository and GitHub uses git alternates for deduplication of fork networks.

I think you could ask GitHub if you can recreate your repository without the offending blob, and you should be good again.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is essentially what I did using bfg tool. They still took it down.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to- github/r...](https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to- github/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository)

<comment><USER2> I'm saying the blob was in a new repository, you had no control over. You couldn't have removed it, you could only make sure it doesn't get referenced in _your_ repository. Which is what you did.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure, but I imagine they have already removed those forks too.

Have a look at this list [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/01/2020-01-2...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/01/2020-01-27-ibm.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> github.com was always a corporate entity and subject to DMCA takedowns.

The notice link so others don't have to hand-type it: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/01/2020-01-2...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/01/2020-01-27-ibm.md)

I feel like that other twitter user / BSA / IBM as the originators of that takedown notice are more useful targets of animosity here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lack of communication and courtesy - disrespect to public good. I am happy to remove the mention per his request.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough, communication could indeed be improved. NAL but I was under the impression that, while they could surely be more helpful here, once they received that official DMCA takedown notice they don't really have a choice in the matter of taking it down or not.

Edit: disabling the repository after being notified by you within 24 hours seems to be against their own policy at [https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca- takedown-...](https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca-takedown- policy) \- have you tried contacting their support again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well they said, I had 24 hours to remove the offending item according to the "remove sensitive data" link which I abided in a matter of a few minutes. They still took down the repo - that is the problem, not sending the notice.

"We're giving you 24 hours to make the changes identified in the following notice:

[https://github.zendesk.com/attachments/token/BqByLyvvRzOAmVy...](https://github.zendesk.com/attachments/token/BqByLyvvRzOAmVyL9TW8FxZ0L/?name=2020-01-27-ibm.rtf)

If you need to remove specific content from your repository, simply making the repository private or deleting it via a commit won't resolve the alleged infringement. Instead, you must follow these instructions to remove the content from your repository's history, even if you don't think it's sensitive:

[https://help.github.com/articles/remove-sensitive- data](https://help.github.com/articles/remove-sensitive-data)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the terminal output of what I did to remove the file from the git history:

~/g/aliostad bfg --delete-files 1703 deep-learning-lang-detection.git

Using repo : /Users/alikheyrollahi/github/aliostad/deep-learning-lang- detection.git

Found 72811 objects to protect Found 2 commit-pointing refs : HEAD, refs/heads/master

Protected commits \</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

These are your protected commits, and so their contents will NOT be altered:

* commit ac12aa68 (protected by 'HEAD') - contains 8 dirty files : \- data/stackoverflow-snippets/cpp/1703 (3.0 KB) \- data/stackoverflow-snippets/csharp/1703 (835 B) \- ...

WARNING: The dirty content above may be removed from other commits, but as the _protected_ commits still use it, it will STILL exist in your repository.

Details of protected dirty content have been recorded here :

/Users/alikheyrollahi/github/aliostad/deep-learning-lang-detection.git.bfg- report/2020-01-27/22-24-03/protected-dirt/

If you _really_ want this content gone, make a manual commit that removes it, and then run the BFG on a fresh copy of your repo.

Cleaning \</comment><comment>--

Found 69 commits Cleaning commits: 100% (69/69) Cleaning commits completed in 304 ms.

Updating 1 Ref \</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Ref Before After \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- refs/heads/master | ac12aa68 | c51406cc

Updating references: 100% (1/1) ...Ref update completed in 13 ms.

Commit Tree-Dirt History \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Earliest Latest | | .................................................DDDDDDDDDDm

D = dirty commits (file tree fixed) m = modified commits (commit message or parents changed) . = clean commits (no changes to file tree)

                             Before     After
     </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
     First modified commit | a4a1bbac | cb32cfbf
     Last dirty commit     | 45322921 | 6b9e8d5d

Deleted files \</comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Filename Git id \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- 1703 | 530293d7 (614 B), 98c9b646 (3.0 KB), ...

In total, 47 object ids were changed. Full details are logged here:

/Users/alikheyrollahi/github/aliostad/deep-learning-lang-detection.git.bfg- report/2020-01-27/22-24-03

BFG run is complete! When ready, run: git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive

\-- You can rewrite history in Git - don't let Trump do it for real! Trump's administration has lied consistently, to make people give up on ever being told the truth. Don't give up: [https://www.aclu.org/](https://www.aclu.org/) \--

~/g/aliostad cd deep-learning-lang-detection.git ~/g/a/deep-learning-lang- detection.git git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive Enumerating objects: 89539, done. Counting objects: 100% (89539/89539), done. Delta compression using up to 8 threads Compressing objects: 100% (89537/89537), done. Writing objects: 100% (89539/89539), done. Total 89539 (delta 28336), reused 61123 (delta 0) ~/g/a/deep-learning-lang- detection.git git push Enter passphrase for key '/Users/alikheyrollahi/.ssh/id_rsa': Enumerating objects: 89539, done. Counting objects: 100% (89539/89539), done. Delta compression using up to 8 threads Compressing objects: 100% (61201/61201), done. Writing objects: 100% (89539/89539), 40.83 MiB | 1.01 MiB/s, done. Total 89539 (delta 28336), reused 89539 (delta 28336) remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (28336/28336), done. To github.com:aliostad/deep-learning-lang-detection.git \+ ac12aa680...c51406cc8 master -> master (forced update) ~/g/a/deep-learning-lang-detection.git cd ..</comment>


Is this a good strategy? - <AUTHOR>

There are many markets out there where there are middlemen or agents. Take, for example, real estate (or, in the olden days, travel).
Do you guys think it's a good strategy to leverage technology to replace the middleman (i.e. Zillow, Expedia, etc.)?
Obviously the middlemen aren't going to like it one bit. In theory, it's great for consumers (more information, downward pressure on prices), but will they fully embrace the service if they still need the middleman (especially if the middleman is reluctant to use the service)?
I know there are some obvious answers, but I'm curious to hear other people's opinions on this. <comment><USER2> Yes, but the devil is in the details. You will encounter a lot of pressure if you position yourself as a middleman's worst enemy from the get go. What we did with our startup is to position ourselves as a way for the middlemen to profit... become their friend and learn more about the business. Maybe after you see how they respond to your solution, you can open the floodgates for everyone.

Anyway, it's difficult to speak in hypotheticals so without knowing what space you're in, I can't offer more advice.

Good luck.</comment>


Merry Christmas to you all - <AUTHOR>

Read, hack and enjoy with friends and family.  Have a safe holiday.<p>Please post holiday projects :) <comment><USER2> Happy holidays. =)</comment>


Uruguay's beloved Pepe bows out to spend time with his Beetle and 3-legged dog - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/uruguay-jose-mujica-humble-president <comment><USER2> Mujica's great. I've lived on and off in Uruguay for a decade and really things are going pretty well. There's laptops for all kids, free internet for everybody, no taxes on tech companies, free universal education and universal healthcare. What's more he's somebody who believes in leading by example.

The thing is, he's not actually retiring. He's president of the senate and leads the largest faction of the governing coalition. Once he steps down from the presidency he'll still be the major power broker in the government and 3rd in line to be president again if anything should happen to Vasquez (new president) and Sendic (new vice president).

He's a friendly old uncle figure who everybody finds adorable. But don't for a minute think that he isn't an incredibly savvy political player. I think he plays up the act because it's not as scary than having somebody who's a libertarian marxist as president.

<comment><USER3> > free universal education and universal healthcare

Do they have universal education up to the university level? Do you know how their public healthcare compares to the Brazilian SUS (Brazil's universal healthcare system)?

<comment><USER4> Yes, we have universal education up to University. Can't compare healthcare, but I think we have a lot to improve in that regard (it is also, a lot newer that university).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pepe Mujica is doing great things in Uruguay but I really wish articles about him would focus more on what he is actually doing as a leader and less on his way of life.

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

I mean, presidency is not a vow of poverty, the president is not the people's redeemer. What matters is administration competency, efficiency, results...

I would like to know why presidents are held almost as emperors here in latin america.

<comment><USER7> In some ways we're still stuck with the old Spanish views.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This headlines drive me nuts (I'm from Uruguay).

I'm not even arguing whether Mujica has done good things or not (I think he has done), but, think of this:

"USA's Beloved Obama who spent his presidency fighting for a more fair medical system in the US and has advocated LGBT rights is retiring to be more with his wonderful family."

Yeah, right, politics are much more complicated than that aren't they?

<comment><USER4> Totally agree (another uruguayan here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an Uruguayan I can't be prouder. For the tech community knowledge he supported deploying FTTH and LTE country wide with even free plans if you can not pay for it. He's a hero in many ways, like it or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone from Uruguay comment on the public safety situation there? I'm a Brazilian living in the US, but I have Uruguayan citizenship because my dad was Uruguayan. I've always tried to keep an eye on the country as a place to maybe move to if things get too dark where I am, but I hear little about public safety issues. Brazil is awful in that regard (in any almost city there's a good chance you'll get mugged even in broad daylight), I wonder if Uruguay is a safer place to live.

<comment><USER10> Its high compared to what it was before. I haven't lived in Brazil but I lived in Germany and Chile for a couple of weeks and its high compared to cities there.

It depends on the neighborhood and how aware of your surroundings you are. Everyone knows someone who got mugged either a relative or a friend. Relative of mine was having dinner at a restaurant, 4 armed robbers came in, took everything from customers plus the money from the business. One of them shoots his gun inside, aiming at the roof. There were people in the second floor eating too, fortunately nobody got hurt. Personally, I just take cabs everywhere at night, and walk during the day if I know the neighborhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> (Offtopic) - does anyone else get the linked article open the "Four Kingdoms" app page in the AppStore when browsing on iPad? This is really weird. Looks suspiciously like The Guardian got hacked.

<comment><USER12> Probably a bad ad in their ad network, not a hack of the site itself.</comment></comment>


MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign launches - <AUTHOR> http://mediagoblin.org/news/crowdfunding-campaign-launches.html

<comment><USER2> ...and the FSF is a crowdfunding platform for free software projects. That could be an interesting development.

<comment><USER3> I think we're still going to use Kickstarter, but maybe we'll do ours in two places.

<comment><USER2> You mean for libre.fm?

Regardless, crowdfunding concurrently on multiple platforms an interesting proposition. I wonder if disallowed in any platform ToS?

Crowdfunding equivalent of publishing/promoting to as many platforms as possible for a given type of work.</comment></comment></comment>


Target CEO defends 4-day wait to disclose massive data hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101329300

<comment><AUTHOR> CEO Gregg Steinhafel says Target disclosed the incident with "lightning speed".

But they only disclosed then because Brian Krebs forced them to after breaking the story on his blog.</comment>


Elizabeth Warren's simple case for breaking up big tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/22/18511860 <comment><USER2> I would take Warren more seriously if she started out by talking about ATT/VZN/Comcast. The "big tech" companies have the potential to harm consumers, but telcos have been harming consumers for decades.

<comment><USER3> By harming do you mean on price? Big tech has the potential to harm through externalities (privacy, control of the media, etc.). A sufficiently free market - with appropriate safeguards to ensure competition and prevent regulatory capture - tends to deal with price just fine, but not with externalities.

Warren's argument here is a straightforward free market one: free markets only work when there's a free flow of information. If Amazon both runs the market and participates in it, it's an inherently unfair playing field. Her argument is _not_ that we should break up companies that we don't like or even those that hurt consumers; her argument is we should break up companies whose intact existence threatens the fundamental nature of free markets.

All that said, as it happens, she opposed Comcast's attempt to buy Fox [https://thehill.com/policy/technology/396559-senate-dems- urg...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/396559-senate-dems-urge-justice- department-to-review-comcast-bid-for-fox) and the T-Mobile / Sprint merger [https://thehill.com/policy/technology/429618-dem-senators- ur...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/429618-dem-senators-urge-fcc- justice-department-to-reject-t-mobile-sprint-merger) — opposing both on the grounds that they're anticompetitive.

<comment><USER4> Telco's have harmed privacy by sharing location data tracking, and adding injections to web traffic

<comment><USER5> > adding injections to web traffic

to substantiate this point: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a foreigner, I'm amazed by how little weight Americans seem to put on international competitiveness. I mean, I guess I should be gleeful that you have presidential candidates that want to blow up the only companies that give you a competitive edge. But really, isn't Warren at all concerned that the ones to pick up the pieces after her plan is implemented are very unlikely to be American?

<comment><USER7> It seems like this sort of thinking would lead to a "race to the bottom" where every country gives maximum leniency to its biggest companies. I'm not sure that's good for anyone.

<comment><USER8> Exactly what we German did with the big automobile companies. It's incredible unhealthy. Once you start listening to their every whim, big corps start to rely on politics to solve their problems. Obviously it's then that they stop to perform, like a spoiled child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think Warren is fantastic but I feel like her argument for Amazon is flawed and I'm curious to hear counter arguments.

In her example of Amazon being a platform and information aggregator, wouldn't a brick & mortar grocery chain like Safeway/Vons/CVS be guilty of the same anti-competitive practices when they sell "Safeway Brand Fruity Os" next to Kellogg Fruit Loops?

Businesses seem to have been able to be platforms and information aggregators for a very long time and we've had plenty of innovation and competition

<comment><USER10> IMHO, your analogy is exactly correct and if Safeway was as big as Amazon, Warren would be calling for them to be broken up too.

On the other hand, maybe the analogy isn't good because safeway displays products side by side while Amazon can more easily promote their own products. Level on a shelf has much less effect than a product being out of sight at the bottom of a webpage or even the second page of search results.

Grocery store margins are razor thin though, they compete with each other a lot.

<comment><USER11> > IMHO, your analogy is exactly correct and if Safeway was as big as Amazon, > Warren would be calling for them to be broken up too.

Walmart does this too and has double the revenue of Amazon. Warren has not called for Walmart to be broken up.

<comment><USER10> But as a percentage of their perspective markets Amazon is larger. The grocery/homegoods industries are very competitive. Think about how many alterantives you have to walmart.

How many places do you routinely go to order things online? How many places do you go for groceries? I bet you have at least three options. Walmart, Regional grocery store, and Target or some other alterative place like trade joes.

Amazon's ability to affect customer behavior is much stronger than walmarts I would argue.

edit: and maybe Walmart _should_ be broken up, just not as high visibility an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do nerds remember back in the day when many were calling out for Microsoft to be broken up? Into two parts: OS division, and Apps division.

The idea was that time and again Microsoft's OS division would anti- competitvely design internal APIs in DOS and Windows that its App division would leverage. There were also instances where Microsoft subtley broke DOS (and maybe even Windows, but definitely DOS) for competing applications. People used to talk about "undocumented" API calls.

In the end Microsoft's OS gained proper competition through the paradigm shift of FOSS, specifically with Linux. Microsoft helped a key competitor (Apple) off its knees and look where we are now – Apple has a mobile OS, Microsoft has none. Microsoft didn't board the internet/web train quick enough, didn't forsee how big search and social media would become (in fairness, a vanishingly small number of people did) and so now they have Google and Facebook to compete with. Amazon parlaying their experience from a building an at-scale marketplace to a cloud-computing platform took everyone by surprise.

Back in the day I lamented Microsoft's stranglehold on the software industry. They are still a behemoth but they no longer have the stranglehold they once had. Amazon has competition. Does Amazon unfairly leverage its marketplace monopoly to crush competitors? If they do, prosecute them. If they don't, out innovate and out compete them!

Will Google's stranglehold on search ever be broken? Maybe we'll have to think laterally. Like distributed open-source search. Will Facebook's hegemony over social media (FB, FB messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram) ever be challenged? Do we have the luxury of finding out in a decade or two like we did with Microsoft? Microsoft never amassed the data on their "customers" that Google and Facebook and every Tom, Dick, and Harry do now.

Of all these companies I intuitively feel that Facebook should be broken up. Into its constituent social media parts, that is. Either that or legally mandate interoperability so that we can move to a federated social media landscape to encourage genuine innovation and competition. We need the global equivalent of the ITU but for social media.

Amazon are scary but that's only because they are bad-ass. If they break the law, fine. If it turns out in a decade that it hasn't been possible to unseat or challenge the enormous tech incumbents with FOSS challenges then maybe we ought to take a serious look at the economics, social dynamics, and network effects involved.

edit: clarity

edit ii: could people who have downvoted my comment explain why please?

<comment><USER7> > In the end Microsoft's OS gained proper competition through the paradigm > shift of FOSS, specifically with Linux.

Are you sure? Microsoft's monopoly was mostly on desktop PC operating systems, and almost all desktops are _still_ running Windows. Most people have never heard of Gnu/Linux and wouldn't want or even know how to install it if they had. MacOS is exclusive to one luxury brand, and I really don't see it much outside of developers and college students.

<comment><USER13> I think its a correct statement if you see Android/Chrome as having displaced Windows/IE as the way the majority of the word consumes the Internet/Web.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but the fact that the desktop became less important compared with mobile/web doesn't actually solve the problem of Microsoft having a monopoly on PC operating systems. Gnu/Linux is almost unusable for non-techies, not because it's deficient, but because almost all third-party software and hardware is built with Windows in mind, because that's what people get when they buy a computer.

In a well-functioning market, all you would have to do to beat Microsoft would be to make a better operating system. In the current market, to beat Microsoft, you have to make a better operating system, target a new category of device, and own one of the biggest companies and several of the biggest websites in the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TheAndyMaturin/status/1178303707357892608 <comment><USER3> This is actually fascinating (even if it may not be the behavior we expect from our elected leaders). He did the same thing in June where he gave a completely baffling interview [1] about how his hobby was painting models of buses out of used fruit crates.

But people suspected [2] then that it might be a similar strategy, to monopolize the results for "boris johnson bus" searches.

I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this? It seems like it works, and it keeps you in the news...

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcCZjDoWTQ)

[2] [https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model- bus...](https://gizmodo.com/did-boris-johnson-ramble-about-model-buses-to- manipulat-1835903361)

<comment><USER4> Boris Johnson has been painting red busses since before I had is own Brexit bus. The Brexit bus wasn't a secret, it was his campaign vehicle. "red busses" only seem obscure to you because you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses.

It's insane that people are obsesses with calling "conspiracy!" on Johnson for making an easily verifiable true statement about himself.

<comment><USER5> > you don't live in the UK which is ... full of red busses.

Well, London certainly is, the rest of the country tends to be mixed between green (arriva) and white/purple (first) these days.

In the days before deregulation, red was indeed the most common colour country-wide, but even then there were abhorrations such as west yorkshire's green and cream - there's another conversation to be had about 1950s and 1960s liveries composed of 'and cream' combinations that probably started with BR (well, the BTC then, which would have been the parent 'company' for most local bus services) 'crimson and cream' carriage livery - known colloquially as 'Blood and Custard'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this?

Well there was a story on french president Macron who was apparently thinking of renaming the ENA (one if not the most prestigeous uni in France) to "Institut Superieur des Fonctionaires", ISF in short ([http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee- par...](http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/l-ena-remplacee-par-l-isf-l- elysee-dement-20190423) sorry it's in French).

But ISF is also the short name of the tax on the richest, which he has gotten rid of amid a lot of controversy.

They didn't end up renaming ENA to ISF, but that would have been a great way to play the SEO game so that searching for "Macron ISF" may have in the future returned results on the school rather than the tax.

<comment><USER7> Describing the ENA as a university is misleading [0]: its does no research and does grant degrees [1]. All "students" are civil servant in training that have been hired through the civil service examinations and will go on to their jobs. They spend more than half of their "studies" working already to learn on the job. It's like saying Parris Island is a university.

[0] In my opinion, this characterization as university stenghtens (a bit) its critics. After all, how come one small university has an almost monopoly on high ranking civil servants and then on top politicians? It should not be the case. But if you see it as a civil servant training program it is obvious how it comes to be - it's like wondering why so many US Army officers come form West Point - well, that's because West Point is there to produce US Army officers.

[1] Well it does in partnership with universities, but not for its main civil servant training program

<comment><USER8> > it's like wondering why so many US Army officers come form West Point - > well, that's because West Point is there to produce US Army officers

US service academies and War Colleges are actually degree-granting institutions, though.

<comment><USER7> This is indeed a limit of my analogy. A closer equivalent would be bootcamp for enlisted personel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm skeptical.

(a)When I search "Boris Johnson model," I still get the Jennifer Arcuri results and (b) even if working perfectly, this kind of SEO spamming would be pretty marginal.

People are exposed to the "model" story via so many avenues: TV, radio, news sites, FB feed, _other_ search terms... It just doesn't seem worth it. At best it takes like 10% of the heat off him for a day.

Null hypothesis is that Boris just says a lot of random, baffling shit and everything makes the news.

<comment><USER10> But using the word "model" to mean "a model of good behaviour" which is what it meant in that context is totally normal English. And Boris has been associated with buses for ages, in his time as London mayor a revamp of the buses became known as literally "Boris Buses". The idea he might have an eccentric hobby involving buses is entirely plausible.

I don't think Boris says random baffling shit. I think the null hypothesis is that a whole lot of Brexit-haters have fully immersed themselves in conspiracy theories, to the extent that normal English words used in interviews is now being described as SEO. It looks comparable to how in America a whole lot of Hillary Clinton supporters ended up believing in a conspiracy theory that said their president was a Russian spy. Any even slightly conservative leader seems to bring this out in some people ... it's a need to see evil plots to explain the phenomenon of people who disagree.

<comment><USER11> The thing is in this case, Boris has been caught red-handed doing very similar sorts of "cunning disguised as idiocy" ploys before. For example, feigning forgetting speeches. It seems plausible that it was intentional.

Both sides of the political aisle are certainly highly susceptible to conspiracy theories about the opposition, but this case seems pretty interesting. It may be a wolf-crying situation, too: since Boris has likely done it before (I disagree with you and think the bus thing was SEO gaming, though this one may not be since the chance of coincidence is likely due to it being common word usage), people are going to start seeing it even when it isn't happening.

<comment><USER12> > The thing is in this case, Boris has been caught red-handed doing very > similar sorts of "cunning disguised as idiocy" ploys before. For example, > feigning forgetting speeches.

Seems hard to blame him for this. Compare [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnaccustomedAsIA...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnaccustomedAsIAmToPublicSpeaking) .

<comment><USER11> I don't blame him, really. I find it quite clever. But I think it's silly to deny it and act like all apparent instances of it are baseless conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER10> But you have no evidence for any of this. It's literally a theory about some hidden deeper motive of a government or leader, like all conspiracy theories. There isn't one shred of evidence Boris makes up non existent hobbies to (unsuccessfully) manipulate search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My pals cracked this one back in June! [https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the- unlikely-...](https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo- strategist)

<comment><USER14> Plugging a mate's blog or not, this is much more interesting and informative than '<screenshot> omg the world is so corrupt' & some guy tweeting speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At first I read it backwards, I thought he had had sex with a model just to hide a scandal about a "model of restraint" and thought " wow, that guy is really doing all he can to hide the scandal".

And then I remembered it was not France and having an affair _could_ be a scandal, and I'm a little disappointed because I preferred my version.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, the affair is only the scandal because it may have caused a conflict of interest. Boris has had plenty of them in the past, to the point where nobody knows for certain how many children he has.

<comment><USER17> Correct. It's the corruption that has his critics seeing blood in the water. Visiting your affair's home during work hours while funneling money into her business and taking her on trips she has no reason to be on to boost her career is what's the problem, not the affair.

The fact that the affair has been admitted matters only because it bolsters corruption allegations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > I wonder why nobody else is willing to do this?

Because it makes you look like a fool. Doesn't mean it won't work though. Bojo apparently targetting the segment for whom this kind thing goes over their heads

<comment><USER19> Because empirically, it doesn't work. The front page of google for [Boris Johnson bus] has stories about:

\- The failure of a busmaker

\- The brexit bus advert

\- The suspicion that his 'model bus' answer was this ploy.

<comment><USER20> It is likely that Google is surfacing the matches it empirically considers more relevant to you.

<comment><USER11> Possibly, but it's also a timeliness thing. This stuff has a window of opportunity: for like a week after the interview, it'll successfully game the results, but after that they may be crowded out by the reporting on the gaming itself.

If he's trying to spike negative results for just a certain period of time, it's quite an effective tactic. News cycles quickly, so even if each instance is eventually caught, it may successfully push down recent news / current events until they're no longer current, which may result in millions of people missing the reporting.

<comment><USER20> All this is possible and maybe even probable but not knowing how Google determines relevancy, makes it impossible to reason about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My respect level for Boris actually went up a few notches after reading about this :)

<comment><USER22> Indeed. The "lovable bumbling fool" image he puts across is a very conscious choice on his part. Despite what you think about his politics (and I'm personally not a fan) you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think.

<comment><USER23> > you can't deny that Johnson is much smarter than he wants us to think.

In playing the political game at least, definitely so. Lots of reports from coworkers (especially from the Foreign Office) that he is genuinely as clueless as he comes across when it comes to other elements of his job.

<comment><USER24> The news story that really made me believe that the bumbling fool shtick is real and not just an act was when he went to a buddhist temple in Myanmar and started reciting a colonial-era Kipling poem about a British soldier reminiscing about a Burmese girl that he kissed - until the ambassador intervened and told him it wasn't appropriate.

If he understood the context of the poem (a lack of sensitivity to the three wars the British fought to suppress Burmese independence) then he would've never recited the poem. But he is a 'well-trained idiot' \- he's had an English classical education, so he knows Kipling, but he doesn't understand what it actually _means_ ('oh yeah, I totally was going to shag a girl when we were fighting in Burma') or how it would come across to someone who wasn't also from a classically trained English background.

So I think he is a clueless bumbling idiot. He, and Jacobs Rees-Moggs, are the British equivalent of a Texan politician who wears a cowboy hat and talks about their guns all the time.

The story is available here - [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris- johns...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson- caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple)

<comment><USER25> > If he understood the context of the poem (a lack of sensitivity to the three > wars the British fought to suppress Burmese independence) then he would've > never recited the poem.

That's exactly why he did it. He's a nasty, vindictive, racist colonialist.

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying he's not racist/colonialist. You only have to read his article about 'flag-waving piccaninnies... tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief...' [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal- view/3571742/If...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal- view/3571742/If-Blairs-so-good-at-running-the-Congo-let-him-stay-there.html). Or his argument that Obama hated the UK because he was Kenyan and had an 'ancestral dislike of the British empire'. Or any of the other dozens examples.

I'm just saying that if he's as smart as people claim, if the whole bumbling idiot is a calculated act, then there's not much to benefit from idiotically reciting that poem, it's not like there's some vast constituency in the British public who love The Road to Mandalay. It's an obscure reference, most British people have never heard of the poem... He seemed genuinely surprised that he shouldn't recite the poem.

I think the bumbling idiot thing is genuine. That doesn't also exclude him from being a nasty vindictive racist colonialist.

<comment><USER26> Isn't it much the same thing as Trump saying something racist that he can kind of get away with? Johnson can say it, incite some anger in people who won't vote for him anyway, get his name on the news again and appeal to his base. Many of his supporters are the kinds of people that want to "Make Britain Great Again". There isn't a vast constituency in Britain who love the poem, but there is a vast constituency who are mildly racist and look back to the "good old days".

<comment><USER27> Yes, Churchill said plenty of stuff that was racist/misogamist even back in those days. Bojo models himself after him. Btw I'm a big Churchill fan in spite of all that. The flawed hero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The most worrying for me?

Even after countless updates to their algorithms, breakthrough AI and ML, breaking hundred of thousands of legit website each time, Google is still dumb enough to be tricked by such a simplistic tactics :-(

Or is Google biased toward "official" speech (even from a really-not-trustable source) like Twitter is when it will allow BS from a President (because it's an official account so not subject to moderation) or like FB is when deciding to NOT fact-check President obvious fake-news for the same reason ?

Maybe it's time to clearly distinguish 2 activities: search on one side, that has to be exhaustive, fact-checked, ranked by differences/complementarity (no use to show 10 times the same result, better to show 10 really different result with indication of common consensus) - and news of the day, where truth is much more "volatile" ?

<comment><USER29> > breaking hundred of thousands of legit website each time, Google is still > dumb enough to be tricked by such a simplistic tactics

Google wasn't tricked, it's intentional. Their business model is generating money from clicks. It's not showing you best results for what you search for. It's showing latest news, tragedy, and what people talk about. 10h old news? OLD, BORING. New shiny 2h young news? YEA, more clicks, clicks and more click, more ads, more clicks, more revenue. The sponsored content online must be constantly changing and adapting to new information to generate more profits and more clicks and keep people clicking and visiting and searching. Don't forget that it's not only sponsored content, but also targeted content with user tracking, because clicks count, on one day they will show you news to annoy you to generate more searches and clicks, on another day they will show you majority of stuff to calm you down. Keep clicking.

<comment><USER30> Eh, so you want older news on this one but you probably want newer ones on others? I don't think this rant makes any sense.

<comment><USER29> This isn't a rant, it's a statement of facts.

<comment><USER31> Seems like a rant to me. What exactly are you criticizing about the way Google decides which results to show first, in this particular case?

<comment><USER29> I'm not necessary criticizing, but it's a bit sad that most popular search engine turned to be manipulation and persuasion machine. I no longer thing about it as search engine, more like "what's trendy network", BUT I recognize that Google Search belongs to google and google is a business, and business does what's most profitable! That's good for them, not necessary for us, I personally almost never use google search, but I use android with google account, just because duck duck go is better search engine and google android is really comfortable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is just silly. The last thing anyone would know about Arcuri is that she was very briefly a model. It would be like searching for info about (UK supreme court president) Lady Hale by Googling "barmaid".

Try instead searching for "Boris Johnson technology lessons", or indeed "Boris Johnson thigh". Has his team SEO'd that yet?

<comment><USER33> > The last thing anyone would know about Arcuri is that she was very briefly a > model.

Sky News: "Boris Johnson: 'No interest to declare' over links with former model Jennifer Arcuri"

The Mirror: "Boris Johnson 'had affair with ex-model Jennifer Arcuri while London mayor'"

The Sun: "Who is Jennifer Arcuri? Model connected to Boris Johnson"

The Independent: "Jennifer Arcuri: Boris Johnson repeatedly refuses to deny affair with ex-model awarded public funds and access"

<comment><USER32> Fair point. Looks like I read the wrong newspapers!

Anyway... BREAKING: this particular ex-model's just had her laptop stolen while she was in the UK... containing 6 years of emails, documents, photos and personal who-knows-what from the time when she was reportedly giving technology lessons to our now Prime Minister.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer- Ar...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7522877/Jennifer-Arcuri- terrified-laptop-close-Boris-Johnson-stolen.html)

<comment><USER34> Arguably it should be the last thing anyone would know about Arcuri - <USER2> everything else a woman in tech has done as irrelevant because she once modelled would normally be a fringe and controversial opinion, to put it lightly - but that's not how the press is framing this story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The funnier thing to me is the people in the thread talking about how DuckDuckGo finds the "right" results.

DuckDuckGo is just Yahoo. I think the results are something like 99.9% the same, so whatever is the 0.1% they add, when I did the search, it results in maybe a slight difference in link ordering.

The reason it finds the "right" results is also the same reason its results are such garbage. And this is coming from someone whose default search is DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER36> > its results are such garbage

Whenever people complain about DDG's search results I am always a bit baffled. It works 95% of the time for me and that 5% is occurs when I am searching for the answer to some obscure bug. I know this is your word against mine but "garbage" is a bit of an exaggeration.

<comment><USER37> > 5% is occurs when I am searching for the answer to some obscure bug

I think these are a majority of my searches, hence I had to switch back to google as DDG was almost never finding me any relevant result.

<comment><USER38> Try Startpage. It uses Google results, but anonymized and without personalization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not the first time he has been accused of this [https://twitter.com/beffernieblack/status/114380892107484364...](https://twitter.com/beffernieblack/status/1143808921074843648?lang=en)

<comment><USER40> I think the case is stronger now. This happening once might just be co- incidence. Twice, not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> While fascinating, if this is a deliberate strategy, I wonder what its intended effect is supposed to be. Are people curious enough to google for stories about Johnson's alleged affair with the American woman going to be satisfied with the "model of restraint" quote? Are they going to forget what they have just been searching for, get immediately distracted and go read what this model of restraint business is all about? Do we have any inkling as to whether this works at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I committed murder and wanted to hide the body, I would hide it on Page 2 of the search results. No one goes there.

After all, if the first x results are not what you were looking for, how likely is it that the next x results will provide a match?

<comment><USER41> That's totally fair if the user doesn't know what they are searching for (e.g. if the only search criterion is Boris Johnson); but if they already know that there is a body; if they have already heard about the model (or the bus), how likely are they to be put off the scent by irrelevant search results?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are already convinced that something is going on, then this will not throw you off, no.

But if you are indifferent to the matter, then you will most likely quickly give up, thinking that it can't be that important if it's not in the top search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Far from unique to BoJo. This is a wildly successful strategy, which also explains the outrageous and obvious lying (e.g. in front of dozens of press saying "there's no press here"). It's not new. Many of the internet era populists currently so successful have used it. Trump was the first time I saw it, but perhaps it goes back further.

Each and every time he lies, misremembers and drops in a search term he makes it harder to disprove as both sides get reported. The original story _and_ the the reports of the use of the lie. Both in the respected media, not just a random blogspot. Frequently they're both running at the same time.

With Trump the Democrats and media spent to much time "fact checking" to see the strategy. Ours have done no better with BoJo, despite seeing it played out so successfully in the US.

It completely burns the post-war expectation that politicians be honest, and plays all sides as effectively.

I'd love to know where it _really_ originated.

<comment><USER43> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Love tech in general but this new psy ops style of leadership that is becoming popular in the west makes me uneasy. Obviously politicians will spin things as always but the tech leveraged version of that is a little ominous

</comment><comment><USER45> We should probably pause for a moment and at least consider whether the true manipulator is the guy who originally posted it on Twitter. As far as I can see, no one has been able to duplicate his "results". I'm not accusing, but would be interested in seeing confirmation from another party.

</comment><comment><USER46> A smart online newspaper that suddenly sees a lot of hits on their "model bus" article would seize that opportunity.

They could rewrite the URL and show an inbetween page that says something along the lines of "we see you are interested in Boris Johnson & models" you might also like ...

Then they could add another article about SEO poisening.

Now THAT would be great reporting!

Not sure if any of them are keen enough to seize that opportunity..

edit: Of course an even easier way to do so is to edit the model bus article and insert a clickable "news headline"

</comment><comment><USER47> Hmm, you sure about this? I just googled "boris johnson model" and got nothing but results about affairs and Jennifer Arcuri.

<comment><USER48> Nobody can be sure about this except google itself, because google gives different results for each user or location. I get all the affairs as well, but I don't matter to BJ as I'm not a UK citizen and won't vote.

<comment><USER49> Just for fun, I connected through a VPN (private internet access) and googled via a fresh firefox private window and the majority of the results are about his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri. A couple of results at the bottom of the page are about his "model of restraint" quote, that's it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The level of paranoia in the Twitter thread is worrying...

<comment><USER32> Welcome to #FBPE Twitter.

<comment><USER51> i'd say welcome to twitter. the trashcan of our times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Reminds me of the conspiracy theory that Disney named the movie Frozen so that it would drown out searches about Walt freezing his head.

</comment><comment><USER53> Once is not a pattern.

Without a pattern this is simply Twitter being Twitter. That is,misguided people - the type that don't understand correlation from cause - are having their free time sucked up, and they like it that way.

Find a pattern. Let's discuss that.

<comment><USER54> This isn't the first time this has been brought up: [https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the- unlikely-...](https://parall.ax/blog/view/3301/boris-johnson-the-unlikely-seo- strategist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I think I've heard about this tactic before, where it was used to help victims of revenge porn. It was used to push unwanted search results for their names away from the top in Google.

</comment><comment><USER56> I made a throwaway suggestion he was doing this a few months back on reddit when he brought "bus" into the conversation [0]

I wish I had started keeping track of things he says to see how his comments impact search results.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris...](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/c59q98/boris_johnson_makes_and_paints_buses_for_a_hobby/es5o3sk/)

<comment><USER4> And this theory was just as absurd last time. Johnson has been talking about buses of various kinds for decades. He doesn't control when his bus claims make news.

<comment><USER56> I disagree. Calling it "absurd" is synonymous with calling it illogical when in fact it is extremely logical for Boris to use keywords to bury hits in search results.

IMHO it is a smart way to game the system to his advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Wow, that's damn impressive. It makes me consider to start following politics, I wonder what other fantastic moves this guy (or somebody else) routinely uses that I never heard of.

</comment><comment><USER58> Might explain something. I raised a petition to use Sunday Voting to beat the Tories & DUP (it gives 15-20% bigger turnouts - nearly all left of centre). On the very next week Johnson came up with a change to the election day to a Monday (the first change since 1931) and almost immediately it was rejected for "religious reasons" \- That sounds very fishy to me. Fight back and sign: [https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133)

</comment><comment><USER59> Maybe he's trying to hide potential results from "Boris Johnson restraint"

Now get that image out of your mind. ;)

</comment><comment><USER60> It's important to be skeptical about this, but it's somewhat fun to entertain as a way of neutralising any potential attack lines for upcoming elections.

So far: * Buses * Models * Bridges

3 is a pattern. Maybe we could anticipate future subjects being letter boxes, water cannons, watermelons, Iran, etc.

</comment><comment><USER61> There should be a word for this, perhaps content or SEO masking, its definitely a thing. I first experienced the practice in regard to an unscrupulous company - whose sales techniques involve misrepresentation (I know as I was briefly trained in them, years ago) - called Marcus Evans. They also run business events, so if you were to look their name up in reference to 'scam' or 'fraud', then details of their 'fraud prevention' event would show up first. Luckily, it looks like someone more skilled in SEO has kicked them down the first page of google, deservedly, or perhaps Google's algorithms have improved since.

</comment><comment><USER62> So appalled but... So impressed!

</comment><comment><USER63> Apparently this is a known strategy.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/11435857618429...](https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1143585761842933760)

</comment><comment><USER64> As a non-Brit, I'm quite impressed by his ploy. I feel the comparison between him and the POTUS are unfair to him. He's way smarter and more tech savvy than his counterpart across the pond.

<comment><USER65> It's not him it's his advisors whether independent or part of the civil service PR dept.

If he's clever it's that, like any good manager, he delegates to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Boris has always been an expert at saying one thing to the people in the room but something else to people reading about his speech afterwards. Now he's taking it to the next level. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER67> Wouldn't this require him to know how he is going to be quoted in advance?

Should everyone be so readily accepting that this is some genius level of foresight?

<comment><USER68> It's hardly genius and it's hardly coming from Boris.

His press team will have told him to drop in particular words or phrases repeatedly - if we hear it once, he has probably said it multiple times.

<comment><USER67> Is there evidence of this happening though?

It just seems like this is a screenshot with some comments on it, and a lot of assumptions.

<comment><USER69> The evidence is the pattern of behavior. No, it's not conclusive of the fact, the accusation is based on circumstantial evidence, but it is still evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> At least in the case of the search, "boris johnson model", the tactic isn't working anymore. "boris johnson bus" on the other hand still shows a bunch of his model-building bus stories. However, if you change it to "boris johnson london bus" then you get some top results that include the controversial red bus.

</comment><comment><USER4> This was debunked last time it went around. People don't understand coincidences.

Johnson has lived a long life. Buses are common. He's painted buses for a long time, and he used a bus in his Brexit campaign.

Johnson says a lot of things; that's been his job for decades.

This conspiracy is the same as the now that says Facebook was recording everything you say and putting it in ads.

</comment><comment><USER70> This has never crossed my mind as a possibility. It's ingenious. I wonder if/when this has ever been done before.

On second thought in a broader way this idea, of masking truth by hiding it behind something similar, is quite old. For example the idea that Pagan holidays were turned into Christian ones in an effort to erase them.

</comment><comment><USER71> They talked about this on John Olliver. They had a bizarre interview where he brought up a story about a bus and people think it is to salt the keywords of Google search to not show a campaign bus that highlighted something like free health care or something like that.

Edit: user "sincerely" has a better description and links

<comment><USER72> Thing that got me was the bus thing was "spiritually" true.

The UK does send a fortune to the EU, and the EU will not spend it on the NHS.

At best they may use it to resurface a road in the UK in some town no one has ever heard of along with a "eu project" propoganda badge.

But the spirit of the message held water, even if it wasnt technically true during tuesday of the second easter of a red moon.

<comment><USER73> It isn't "spiritually" true. It is _factually_ true to the extent that the High Court ruled 350m was approximately the correct gross figure. Indeed some say that figure is conservative because it was based on projections from an official figure dated from 2014 that put the gross at closer to 450m. I'm guessing 2014 was high because of financial bailouts still being paid into the EU coffers.

From the ruling statement:

"The alleged offence set out in the Application for Summons is that the Claimant "repeatedly made and endorsed false and misleading statements concerning the cost of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union". _It appears that if the Claimant had said /endorsed a figure of £350m per week gross, or £250m per week net, there would have been no complaint._"

[https://www.judiciary.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc...](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/07/2019ewhc-1709-admin-johnson-v-westminster-mags- final.pdf) (search in doc for "350" to find the juicy bits)

<comment><USER74> Isn't it strange that any and all seemingly pro-Brexit posts here are being downvoted.

What you posted is factually correct. From observation, HN has turned into just another Slashdot, unfortunately. I came here to escape from Slashdot's obvious liberal-biased bubble, but the infestation has happened here too. No doubt this post will be downvoted into oblivion as well, including the other replie(s) I've made on this topic. :(

<comment><USER45> No - it isn't strange. This is Hacker News. We are here to talk about the technical aspects of the alleged search manipulation, not your political beliefs. It's well known that political opinion isn't on the table for discussion here. If you want that kind of discourse, check out the politics subreddit, where you will find oodles of children spouting their uninformed political opinions.

<comment><USER42> It's not nearly that simple.

There have been plenty of non-flagged stories on both UK and US politics where they deviate from the regular, with discussions that haven't descended into flame war and a sea of greyed posts. Not specifically relating to tech, but are exceptional in _some_ way. e.g. Brexit and the various constitutional shenanigans, some surprise USSC or agency ruling etc.

Reasonable discourse has resulted with good points on both sides - along with a minority of both sides playing it like reddit - black/white voting, and absurd easily disproved comments.

The "day-to-day" and regular politics can stay in the reddit cesspit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I can foresee the next step of this, as politicians try and seed the SOE terms for their opposition with their speeches. We could be due an era of complete gibberish from politicians instead of just lies (note: i direct "lies" to all politicians not to JUST Boris )

</comment><comment><USER76> "The medium is the message." — Marshall McLuhan

As an aside, these are the kinds of things that people worry about, when they worry about (ML) algorithms "overfitting" to a particular proxy target/metric.

</comment><comment> _-___________-_ The media could probably recognise this tactic and refuse to support it, by paraphrasing that part of his quote, e.g.

      PM emphasises his "restraint" amid Parliament language row

</comment><comment><USER77> That's actually pretty clever. Credit where it's due.

</comment><comment><USER78> Yet another reason we need synonym-aware search. Google should do nlp to find which "model" is being used in the page and then ask you which one you meant.

</comment><comment><USER79> Just a reminder that Boris Johnson is not an elected leader.

<comment><USER80> You're simply "reminding" people of how a parliamentary democracy works.

Plus it is inaccurate, he was elected, against Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, and other candidates in the Conservative Party Leadership race. Voted on by MPs who the public themselves feel were qualified to represent them in a representative democracy.

I have no love for Boris Johnson (nor the Conservative Party itself). But this kind of "not a democratic leader!" line is simply spreading misinformation about how the UK's system of government works. You vote for MPs, MPs vote for stuff on your behalf, and in this case they voted for the leader of their party (and now the government).

It should also be noted that the UK doesn't have a ruling king and it doesn't have a president. The PMs power is a lot more curtailed than some other countries that do, and they need to go back to Parliament to accomplish much of their agenda (and are equally subject to the law). If they lose their voting majority, they're hugely neutered.

<comment><USER81> However, he's lost his majority due to throwing about 20 MPs out of the party. This is a really, really odd situation; Schroedinger's PM. At some point, probably very soon, the confidence vote is going to be held and we find out whether he has a majority or not.

He's also trying to talk up whether he's really subject to the law or not, specifically in regard to the Benn Act against no-deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> This really raises the question of what news story involving 'bowling' and 'green' was around in early 2017.

</comment><comment><USER83> This is an interesting idea but is it possible that in this case the reason the top story has changed is because it's newer?

</comment><comment><USER84> the conservatives seem to be way ahead of the others when it comes to modern technology/media. we've seen physicists being hired to plan where to knock on doors [0], very targeted social media ads based on proper data analysis, and now apparently SEO hacking.

not sure that these are good developments; but they seem irreversible and labour/the libdems want to catch up asap if they want to stay relevant.

[0] as mentioned by Cummings here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbRxH9Kiy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbRxH9Kiy4)

</comment><comment><USER85> Finally, a politician who understands tech

</comment><comment><USER86> Not that much of an idiot as I thought.

On hiding criminal behavior at least. Normally it means a lot of experience in that.

<comment><USER87> An idiot wouldn't get to be tory leader. He wants to be portrayed as a lovable idiot but it doesn't mean he is one. I doubt we ever see any part of his real personality in public.

Doesn't mean he can be a good prime minister though, being good at politics isn't the only thing that matters for the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Another good reason to stop using Google and use alternative search engines.

</comment><comment><USER89> Human SEO. What a clever tactic. This is essentially adding noise to signal-- what Trump does to the media, just a little more tech-savvy.

The steps: -An issue comes out that makes you look bad -You take a question and respond in a boring, non-memorable way -Then you go off on wild, ridiculous tangents that everyone guffaws at until the next news cycle.

</comment><comment><USER90> This is up there with "I was talking about X with my friend, and half an hour later I saw a Google ad for X. Ergo, Google are listening in on my phone's microphone."

<comment><USER90> Apparently, rational HN readers don't require any actual evidence before going with the assertion that "Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews". Crazy times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> This is a case of "Streisand effect"

</comment><comment><USER92> See also "Boris Johnson & Kippers" [1] ("kipper" is a nickname for a member of UKIP, a right-wing pro-Brexit political party)

He was talking about buses on the radio again this morning, as was Sajid Javid, the chancellor, yesterday.

[1] [https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson- kippers...](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-kippers-eu- isle-of-man_uk_5d30a0d4e4b004b6adacb0e2)

<comment><USER93> The "spineless chicken" Corbyn attack could also have been to muddy the "chlorinated chicken" association too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Quite impressive knowledge of technology. Why do people think this is a bad thing? Certainly saves on PR costs.

</comment><comment><USER95> Time to re-read Stephenson's (well, "Stephen Bury") Interface. I don't remember it as a particularly good read, but it might be great fun to contrast the innocuously blunt politicization of mediatech envisioned 25 years ago with the realities of the Trump/Johnson way of playing democracy.

</comment><comment><USER96> Is he buying adwords?

</comment><comment><USER97> Or perhaps after 10hs the older news articles faded out. Occam's razor.

</comment><comment><USER62> Politicians are now also under the Google algorithms.

Which gives Google unprecedented power.

</comment><comment><USER98> People like to compare him to Donald Trump, but what I've always read is that unlike Trump he's actually quite intelligent. For better or worse.

</comment><comment><USER99> John Oliver mentioned this in his show, Last Week Tonight a couple of months ago [0]. Boris is a snake with a smart team behind him. He wants to divide and he creates more tension and hatred instead of providing solutions. He follows the steps of the Oompa Loompa across the pond.

[0]: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyO_MC9g3k)

Edit: this post will be sooooo bad for the "karma points" but it's 100% accurate on BoJo the Bozo.

<comment><USER100> You deserve the downvotes given nonsense like "Oompa Loompa". Hackernews may have declined, but we haven't fallen far enough to ket that kind of bullshit slide.

<comment><USER99> If you see any other comment I make (and I don't expect anyone to spend 1 second on seeing my other opinions) I am always positive an open minded. Right now this snake is threatening my well being, my income, my life balance. I don't take that lightly. This snake is also being reckless with a neighboring country, Ireland, and with his dangerous and careless actions he is risking to throw them to another decade of Troubles (look it up). My negativity hurt your eyes. His actions may cause deaths. You're right. I'm to blame.

Edit: I actually upvoted your comment, you are right on calling out my comment :)

<comment><USER100> > My negativity hurt your eyes.

That's uncharitable. I believe your rhetoric hurts the culture and quality of discussion of hackernews.

I have seen quite a number of places degenerate into partisan (I don't strictly mean USA Dems vs Reps, but Culture War sides) namecalling, normally shortly before one side completely drives out the other and degenerates into a virtue-signalling circle jerk. While that may be hackernews' inevitable fate I want to put it off as long as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Algorithmic news is fake news

<comment><USER69> It's not algorithmic news; It's the _ordered presentation_ of news via algorithmic methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> Is it any wonder that Dominic Cummings wants to leave the GDPR, sorry I mean the EU.

</comment><comment><USER103> I'm shocked that this works on a technical level, simply because a lot of words we use are ambiguous, so Google's algorithms are impressively good at picking up what we're really searching for.

I'm constantly amazed to see the correct search results, and almost never have to add clarifying terms, even when I have to admit that I am being quite ambiguous.

So I never would have expected this to be possible, let alone exploitable.

<comment><USER104> I don't think it really does work? When I search, the hidden story appears again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Boris is a cunning boy. Why hasn't (Barbara) Stresisand effect eaten got by now?

</comment><comment><USER106> Definitely more clever than asking Google to reove the results, like Hillary Clinton did during the campaign wrt. Searches on her health.

</comment><comment><USER107> This sounds like another silly conspiracy theory to me, what is most likely happening is the exact opposite.

These cheap news websites will take some term relating to Boris Johnson, like Bus or Model, and engineer articles that will get clicks in order to generate advertising revenue.

It's the cheap websites doing SEO based on popular Boris Johnson terms, and not Boris Johnson's team.

I mean the risk of someone in his staff of multiple people that would have to know about this to leak that he was doing it to the press just to push down on google searches unfavorable news would be huge.

One leak and his career would be over, I mean come on it does not make any sense.

<comment><USER82> > These cheap news websites will take some term relating to Boris Johnson, > like Bus or Model, and engineer articles that will get clicks in order to > generate advertising revenue.

The three websites mentioned are amongst the UK's biggest news websites, reporting on legitimate Boris-related news (ie his alleged affair with Arcuri and his rather farcical claim that he's a model of restraint). The claim in the tweet is that Boris used the wording 'model of restraint' to try to mask the other story, though if this is true it clearly didn't work very well. It's credible mostly because of the prior bus incident; it's actually a fairly reasonable explanation for Boris spouting what otherwise appeared to be contextless nonsense.

> One leak and his career would be over, I mean come on it does not make any > sense.

Wait, you think _this_ would be the controversy to sink Boris Johnson? Really? Boris is now so unpopular that the people who still like him are largely almost unshakeable, but even before his recent troubles, this would not have moved the dial.

<comment><USER107> If he tried to use the sentence model of restraint to bury on Google results the stories about his affair with a model, it would never work because the front page of google has 10 results, surely both stories (model of restraint and affair stories) will rank in the top results.

At most, he might be able to divert some of the traffic from one article to the other, but no more.

If that is what people are accusing him, it might be true it's possible that he is being advised to use this political SEO strategy, to try to divert internet attention from one story to the other.

But the results would be unpredictable and marginal at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> I don't care. I want BREXIT now, since the british voted for it. All these delays are poison for democracy. Hard brexit yesterday. And if the pro EU people want to join again, they can apply in 5 years if they manage to find a majority. And now, let the downvotes come.

<comment><USER69> People voted for Brexit, sure, but two problems come to mind when trying to use that fact as support for _crashing_ out of the UK:

1) People did not, when voting, stipulate _what sort_ or Brexit they wanted, but they were promised an orderly exit with a great deal that would preserve the benefits of EU membership. And in polls since then, they have overwhelmingly said they _do not_ want no-deal. This places the democratic path firmly on the side of "let's get a deal done the right way." Though with no majority agreeing on "the right way" is a problem, it's one for democratic compromise to solve, and that can take time.

2) Appealing to the 2016 will of the people ignores the fact that democracies don't vote one and never ever ever touch on the same topic again. In fact there are votes every few years so that, if people change their minds, that can be reflected in government. Personally I think going back on Brexit at this point would be bad for the UK as a society, if not so much as an economy, but there's nothing undemocratic about people saying, "I made a choice, I've since learned a little more about it and don't like it anymore. Let's vote to see if enough people feel the same way."

<comment><USER108> Oh, thats so british. "we want brexit, but we want a deal with all the benefits". Another reason to want a hard brexit yesterday. The british play this pick and choose game since they joined the EU. When push comes to shove, they end up siding the the US, not even caring about EU policy. And the EUR was also never really interesting to these classy brits. Sorry, but its time to end this, fast.</comment></comment></comment>