On Nordstream explosion "Russia denies responsibility for the explosions. But few doubt that the Kremlin did it."
I can stop reading at this line to know that this isn't journalism, it's opinion at best and propaganda at worst. I expect better from HN.
At this point if Moscow gets obliterated in a Nuclear Mushroom cloud, I expect the next mornings headlines to be "And here's how Russia benefits from this"
You denounce their pronouncement but what have you added to the discussion with your comment?
The explosions benefit Russia because it gives them cover for a permanent stop to supplying Germany with gas, something that was already a given because Germany would never buy gas from Russia again due to their atrocities in the war. In the Russians' mind it gives them the "moral high ground" rather than humiliation and makes out the West to be the villain. This is typical Russian logic.
On the other side there is no rational reason for the West to destroy the pipelines, outside of strained conspiracy theories that the US wanted to stop Germany from buying gas from Russia and buy it from the US, which was already happening. Nevermind that the risk/reward of such an action would be stupid for the US and that it has other, much safer ways to achieve the same result.
> no rational reason for the West to destroy the pipelines, outside of strained conspiracy theories that the US wanted to stop Germany from buying gas from Russia and buy it from the US
What makes it strained? Even if Germany didn't buy gas, and wasn't planning to buy gas, that could change any time. Now it cannot.
The gas shortage in Europe has only just begun. We will suffer from it over the next several years, Germany more than most.
Saying there was never any chance of a change of policy in Germany is not serious.
> In the Russians' mind it gives them the "moral high ground" rather than humiliation and makes out the West to be the villain. This is typical Russian logic.
I am not a Russian, but would highly advise you to carefully choose your words about any nation and their beliefs/logic.
> On the other side there is no rational reason for the West to destroy the pipelines
If you can't find reason, doesn't mean there is no reason. I could also ask same question there was no reason for NATO expansion because war ended, no reason for EU/US not to support diplomatic actions, instead of pushing to the war.
> The explosions benefit Russia because it gives them cover for a permanent stop to supplying Germany with gas,
Russia is still supplying gas to Europe (and indirectly to Germany) through Ukrainian pipelines that operate normally. Despite all the carnage of war neither side attacked the pipelines. War is war and business is business.
It does not benefit Russia. It benefits Putin by removing a motivation for other Moscow elites to depose him. They can't make a deal with Europe to turn the gas back on in exchange for Europe supporting their new regime.
What is happening is that the thin line between Putin and Russians gets more and more blurred. When the war broke out in 24 February, there were a few protests, but they were quite scarce, and the opinion polls presented in Western media showed that Russians support Putin's war. Now after the mobilization things changed a bit, but it's very clear that many Russians, even well-educated, have soaked in a lot of what is being constantly broadcast in state media: that Ukrainians are subhuman Nazis that have been killing Russians for 8 years so Russia has no choice but save the children.
When you think of it, it's really sad. Because now that Russians have clearly realized that this is not any "special operation" but a real war, their war, and that they are going to die in it, it's already too late - it's even difficult to escape these days if you don't have ample resources.
I think it a bit self-contradictory that the Russian media always accuse the West of being Russophobic and at the same time air programs like this one:
> I can stop reading at this line to know that this isn't journalism, it's opinion at best
It's the "opinion" of pretty much everyone in the geopolitical community. Hardly propaganda.
And equating The Economist with Russia Today is just ludicrous and a sad demonstration of the effectiveness of the "Firehose of falsehood" propaganda technique employed by, well, guess who. (hint - same guys who blew up the pipeline)
>It's the "opinion" of pretty much everyone in the geopolitical community.
How exactly did Russia sneak so deep into enemy territory to blow it up and sneak back out again? Especially considering how incompetent we hear that they are in literally every single article written?
I've yet to read a single explanation of this, and in fact you would think we're not supposed to look on a map and ask ourselves this question since it doesn't seem to even be asked by "everyone in the geopolitical community".
You forget that Russia controls the ingress end of the pipelines. They could, and IMO almost certainly did, simply send maintenance "pigs" [1] laden with explosives and a timer down 3 of the 4 lines. No submarines necessary, they didn't even have to leave the office.
Honest question. Now that you know just how easy it was for Russia (and only Russia) to do, does that change your calculus a little?
The Swedish investigation determined there were explosions in the area, not from within the pipeline, so that would eliminate that. Also there is the pesky problem of how the US benefits from it while it hurts the Russians, so common sense would consider the motive.
Sure there were explosions, of course there were. The investigation has not released any information about the location - internal or external - please feel free to correct me. I was only demonstrating how easy it would have been for them, since others were going on about submarines and what not.
Russia had already shut off the gas, "hurting" themselves by your own logic. They have a long, proven history of irrational behaviour and false flag operations. And if the USA had done it, against all reason and logic, why didn't they finish the job?
Anyway, I did say almost certainly Russia. Who knows, could have been some faction in Germany or another EU power seeking to really force Germany's hand. But it seems far more likely to be the obvious actor with the means, motive and mindset who started the bloody war in the first place.
It is trivial to determine blast direction (inward vs outward), which is how Sweden was able to determine so quickly that the blast was from nearby, not from within (which eliminates your theory completely).
Also, everybody in Europe hates Russia so if the investigation had pointed to them that would have been shouted from the rooftops immediately. Instead, the details of the report has been hidden from public view and Russia was told they couldn't see it.
So really nothing would indicate Russia is behind it and everything indicates they're not.
Russia had already shut off the gas, "hurting" themselves by your own logic.
They shut it off which left them leverage (i.e. "play nice, we turn it back on"). Blowing it up removes that option and removes all of their leverage.
Russia literally has submarines built for this type of purpose (e.g. the Belgorod). And yes, their armed forces are a clown fest of incompetence, but they still have the occasional hit/stroke of luck. They do genuinely produce some good equipment (e.g. BMP-3) that is easy to maintain, where they fail mostly is around the human factor.
Sounds like US/NATO are incompetent then if they let Russia sneak in that deep and blow up a crucial pipeline in the middle of a war, all without a trace.
Fortunately the US benefits the most from this so that was very considerate of Russia, I guess. To sabotage themselves for our benefit. Bold move.
When countries are at war, you don't get to see the opposing point of view. Being said by the opinion writer, is they don't deny the Kremlin did it. Which is on the face of it utterly false. They likely aren't lying and probably believe it to be true. It's really a sign of how bad journalism as become.
If the kremlin wants to shut down the pipeline, they simply shutdown. The sender and receivers are the last folks who will sabotage or damage.
So who did? It's going to be a well funded country with something to win.
Norway just got their pipe online literally 1 day after.
Canada/USA want to export their energy. Well not canada, they lack the capability.
Middle east? Maybe? Unlikely.
Climate groups? Very unlikely.
China or India? Absolutely. They are getting a huge discount on russian energy now.
> ... it's opinion at best and propaganda at worst. I expect better
Life is going to be one long series of disappointments for you. Well done for engaging your critical thinking faculties, but expecting unbiased facts is, well, naïve.
Keep being sceptical. Especially of the things you want to believe.
It's reasonable to assume that some govt did it, the number of options is small. The two likely suspects are the US or Russia.
Russia in active aggressor in this conflict and has the most to gain by killing the pipeline since the gas they now still sell is more expensive and they have other places to ship the gas (if anyone know a reference to Russian gas exports, I'd like to see).
For America to do it is harder to believe (even though there is a video of Biden alluding that they will "shut it down"). Even though they might have what to gain from LNG exports - the destruction of the European economy is not something that will help the US in the mid/long-term.
> For America to do it is harder to believe (even though there is a video of Biden alluding that they will "shut it down")
It would be one of the few actions the US could take in 2022 that would have pretty much bi-partisan political support. That to me lends a level of credibility to the possibility along with Biden’s inability to handle off the cuff questions, even though I suspect that the likely culprit is not the US.
However there is zero doubt in my mind that there are a group of folks within the Biden administration who cringe every time he runs off script. It’s said that President Obama once said “Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck something up”.
On the Nordstream explosion, Russia continued to push gas into the pipeline after the explosion. Why, if it is broken, lose that gas to kill a whole ecosystem close the Danish / Swedish exclusive zones?
Also which other country does have an interest in cutting internet cables between Europe and the US?
“There will either be Russian land, or a scorched desert,” Major General Valery Vasiliev is reported to have told his troops.
Energoatom claims that Ukrainian intelligence services are aware of the fact that Russian forces had rigged the site of the nuclear power plant with explosives.
It sounds terrible....but it's all second hand sources, specifically the Ukrainian Intelligence. The whole story of the nuclear power plant doesn't pass the sniff test and the Guardian article is a bit more critical of it. Why would Russia bomb their own forces that they hold? Why would Russia blow up a nuclear plant in territory it wants to own, next to the Southern heartland of their country.
One possible explanation is that it's not a centrally issued order, and it comes from the same ignorance that drove them to dig trenches in the deadly earth in Chernobyl.
I've heard this dangerous narrative down playing dangers of nuclear war from people who have never experienced a total war before & are leaning into narratives spread by the military-industrial complex.
However many failures the Russian military may have, all it takes is 1 missile hitting a major city and you'll see more deaths in the US than have been seen in all the wars it fought combined.
I don't think MIC would support this, I think they are at least somewhat competent and it's in their interest to disseminate FUD, not the "russia weak" narrative. The latter is something that would have come out of reddit's heavily censored echo chamber
There are two narratives being told - one to the top brass to increase investment and one to gen population of not to worry we're going to win so don't be a defeatist/pacifist/collaborator.
1 - Uncertain about something about you (I imagine technical aptitude), and want to rule out their concern
2 - There are 2 close candidates
Either way you should confirm that it is the final stage, confirm what they'd need to see to hire you and if you are feeling confident maybe use it to negotiate salary!
Sounds like you are close to getting the job though so I wouldn't dismiss it especially if you have no doubts about the company!
If you have to interview someone 6 times to quantify technical aptitude, don't hire that person. You shouldn't be on the fence after 5 interviewers.
Needing to check the technical aptitude of someone after 5 previous interviews means your interviewing process is broken, or you're trying to convince yourself that a weak candidate is good enough. Neither option is a ringing endorsement of decision making at the company.
I agree - but the decisions on the recruiting process is not on the team, assuming this is a mid-large sized company - that decision could be made miles away from the people interviewing you.
You can write them off based on this, but it's not pragmatic. Downside another hour of their life vs $$$ increase from the role. That 60 mins could be the difference between X00k!
I've experienced #1 before, when there should have been absolutely no doubt about my technical aptitude and the low level of questions asked confirmed they really didn't have a good grasp on what I could do. It turned out to me a big mistake to take that job, although it was at the beginning of the dot.com crash so I didn't think I could be very picky.
I’d recommend against opening salary negotiations before they settle on you. If they have two at this point relatively equal candidates your negotiating power is far lower.
> 1 - Uncertain about something about you (I imagine technical aptitude), and want to rule out their concern
They've already done live coding with you but they're not sure about your technical aptitude. So they're going to do more of the same thing that didn't work for them before. This says a lot about the company's habits.
> 2 - There are 2 close candidates
There are two close candidates. They're especially close in "live coding" ability. Let's have an async code-off! Why is live coding so important to the company? Is the other candidate going through this, too? Is the point of this really just to see which of you will swallow more BS? This also says a lot about how the company works.
Being on the fence is a good potential explanation. It could also be a quasi team selection thing. This is for a non technical role, but another team where I work put someone through all the normal rounds and then didn’t give them an offer but asked me if I wanted them on my team. Well, I wasn’t privy to that process so I need my own “round” and now this person has got an extra interview and it probably looks weird or bad for everyone but I ended up making her an offer and she accepted.
“[W]hen you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google,” @matthewde_silva quotes @yegg"
Seems you're backtracked on being unbiased with the recent announcement of DuckDuckGo censoring sources on the back of the Ukrainian War. Any comment on that - seems like the bigger DDG gets, the further you stray from your initial values
No, there hasn't been any backtracking on this. The full quote continues "On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time."
Unlike other search engines (like Google), we don’t alter search results based on someone’s previous search history. In fact, since we don’t track our users we don’t have access to search histories at all. Those other search engines show you results based on a data profile about you and your online activity (including your search history), and so can be slanted towards what they think you will click on the most based on this profiling. This effect is commonly known as the search filter bubble, but using DuckDuckGo can help you escape it.
This does not mean our search results are generally “unfiltered” because, for every search you make online, a search engine’s job is to filter millions of possible results down to a ranked order of just a handful. In other words, a search engine has to use algorithms programmed by people to determine what shows up first in the list of results, what shows up second, and so on. Otherwise, for every search you’d just get a completely random set of results, which of course wouldn’t be very useful.
However, we do this ranking in a strictly non-partisan manner, and not based on my politics (or anyone's for that matter). I left another comment here on how that works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31557837
Your last statement directly contradicts your tweet on March 10th.
"Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. #StandWithUkraine
At DuckDuckGo, we've been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation."
We get it - you are making these moves because of financial reasons or political pressure....but don't try and play to both sides with the corporate speak.
**
We actually do not intentionally censor any news results, meaning media outlets are not being removed or their stories displayed so far down in the results they are effectively removed. That is, unless legally prohibited, you should find all media outlets in our results, and they should generally show on top if you search for them by name or domain name. If you are seeing otherwise, please let me know and we will investigate.
A search engine's primary job is to rank results, trying to put results that most quickly and accurately answer the query on top. We do this ranking in a strictly non-partisan manner. Ranking for news-related searches is particularly difficult because for most news stories there are often hundreds of media outlets covering the same story, many with similar relevancy in terms of keyword matching and popularity. As such, we look to another ranking factor to ensure just the top of the results aren't taken by obviously very low-quality news results so that users have more sources of relevant, high-quality news results to compare and choose between.
The non-partisan factor we've found to help accomplish this is a rare, but well-documented history of a site's complete lack of news reporting standards, such as routinely using spam or clickbait to artificially inflate traffic, consistently publishing stories without citing sources, censoring stories due to operating with very limited press freedom, or misleading readers about who owns, funds, and authors stories for the site. And since we do not censor sites, even state-sponsored media in countries with very limited press freedom, these sites will still show up in results, and even on top like when you search for them directly.
**
With that context, RT is a media outlet with "very limited press freedom" where journalists must censor their articles or else face jail time, or worse. And RT still shows up in our results, and on top if you search for it directly, e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt+ukraine&ia=web
The concern comes down to how that evaluation of a website is made. It’s the same way people can’t really accept fact checkers because “who fact checks the fact checkers?” With the news ranking it is who evaluates the evaluators. Without an option for users to switch off the part of the algorithm that includes evaluating for journalistic truth (as I will summarize those non partisan factor’s goal) people will always feel like the possibility of manipulation will always be there.
> And RT still shows up in our results, and on top if you search for it directly, e.g
Strange, but RT does not show up in DDG for me. Not by using your link, not even by searching "Russia Today" on it. The first results I get are Al Jazeera or Fox News. No Russia Today at all. How's that?
I'm in the EU, yes, but I don't understand that either. Because there are search engines, freely available in the EU, that didn't honour that questionable request about banning websites.
So, for me, DDG is hiding some results while other search engines that I can use in the EU, do not.
I was not talking about EU-based search engines, I was talking about search engines not applying censorship that I can use from the EU. And as far as I know, DDG is not EU-based either.
If that's the case, why would you accede to the EU's demands? Would you geoblock search results in China if the CCP deemed certain content or content providers illegal?
You're splitting hairs when you say down ranking is not censorship - you know full well the impact to a websites traffic once it gets out of the top 3 results let along the 1st page of results.
The fact you started censoring "Russian media outlets" right after the start of the war shows the political nature of your decision, those "limited press freedoms" weren't a concern until Mar 22.
Do you publish the decision making process for how the "non-partisan" decisions on censorship are made - or is this another blackbox? I'm sure Dailymail, New York Post and Al Jazeera are all down-ranked too, considering they meet your "non-partisan factors" right?
I'm saying it's a broad term - forget Russian news. Go ask take a Fox watcher and a CNN watcher to point out what they interpret as "Fake News" and you'll get 100s of differences.
If I search for something on a search engine, I am trusting the operator of that to filter and down rank based on their own criteria, whether that's baidu, yandex, Google or DDG. It's completely reasonable for a site who's job it is to filter and aggregate results to penalise the spread of misinformation. If they don't, why am I using it at all?
"The assailant fled up to the street and has not been caught, the police said. He was described as a dark-skinned man, heavyset with a beard, wearing a dark sweatshirt, an orange T-shirt, gray sweatpants and white sneakers."
In one of the most heavily policed areas in the world (Manhattan) how was the shooter able to get away.
Depending on the political leaning of the writer - different types of Mass Shootings are lumped together.
Buffalo was a terrorist event, no one lumps in 9/11 with plane crash figures and writes an article saying "We have high point of X plane crash deaths in 2001" - because that would be intellectually dishonest.
Of the 198 events, how many were related to criminal/gang shootings & how many were random/terrorist type events.
The article is discussing mass shootings, defined by the Gun Violence Archive, (whose data is posted in the article here[0],) as "an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter."
You seem to be implying some politically-motivated misrepresentation or classification of the data is occurring within the article, but the article only refers to the broad category of "mass shooting," which includes both terrorist events and criminal/gang shootings.
"With just over 19 weeks into the year, this averages out to about 10 such attacks a week," when referring to the Buffalo shooting.
Saying "10 such attacks" implies the attacks are all similar in characteristics beyond just the number of people involved. The article talks about mental health, it talks about a pre-planned desire to kill. But it doesn't talk about gang violence. These are very different sources of intent. If you want to use the gun violence archive data to make a point, it should be about gun violence in totality - not cherry picking their numbers to make the case that the US is full of hate-filled crazies who are randomly shooting places up 10x per week.
>not cherry picking their numbers to make the case that the US is full of hate-filled crazies who are randomly shooting places up 10x per week.
This isn't an argument anyone, much less the article, is actually making, it's a strawman.
Plus, mental health and a pre-planned desire to kill obviously correlate with gang violence. Bloods killing crips and white supremacists shooting up restaurants are not as separate in their intent or root cause as you seem to believe.
