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Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

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Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#131

Post by ttepasse »

barry-cotter wrote: post #114
drbw wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but he's always been lazy and unwilling to do much actual work, apparently [1] his headmaster wrote to his father in 1982: Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies... Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half): I thi…

No one gets to be a Telegraph columnist without doing a ton of work, never mind Prime Minster of the UK. Being unwilling to do work purely on other people’s say so is a separate trait from being lazy. He also has a much better command of Ancient Greek than anyone unwilling to apply themselves could acquire however wonderful the teachers the were exposed to. This is quite apart from the question of whether he’s a buff…

> No one gets to be a Telegraph columnist without doing a ton of work

I can't speak for the 90s but watching the Daily Telegraph in the last years my impression is that the chief qualifications of their journalists and especially their columnists seems to be how much they mirror the weird political stances of the Barclay brothers, the owners of the DT.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#132

Post by richrichardsson »

nbevans wrote: post #65
DarkmSparks wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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: “…

I could say that as a consumer I used my skill and cunning to buy something for 20% discount compared to everyone else, if I quote the price before VAT, but the fact is that I would have paid the same price as everyone else once VAT was applied. The whole idea of saying "we send £350m to the EU" was based on the same mental gymnastics.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#133

Post by NeedMoreTea »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #120
scarygliders wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#134

Post by bloogsy »

barry-cotter wrote: post #114
drbw wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but he's always been lazy and unwilling to do much actual work, apparently [1] his headmaster wrote to his father in 1982: Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies... Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half): I thi…

No one gets to be a Telegraph columnist without doing a ton of work, never mind Prime Minster of the UK. Being unwilling to do work purely on other people’s say so is a separate trait from being lazy. He also has a much better command of Ancient Greek than anyone unwilling to apply themselves could acquire however wonderful the teachers the were exposed to. This is quite apart from the question of whether he’s a buff…

No, but some people get to be Telegraph columnists and into positions of power without having to do as much work and face as much scrutiny as others because of their skin colour, their familial wealth and connections, and because they went an elite school.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#135

Post by laurent123456 »

olivierduval wrote: post #38

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 subj…

Isn't Google supposed to comply with the "right to be forgotten" in the EU? In that case Boris Johnson could have asked to remove the offending articles and, since they are gone, new ones take their place. Just a guess thought, but indeed it's strange that they can be so easily tricked.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#136

Post by charlus »

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.

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#137

Post by VBprogrammer »

scarygliders wrote: post #90
m-i-l wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The public voted for something specific and 3 years down the road it has not happened or been scheduled properly. That should be the bigger democratic scandal" The public did not vote for something specific - they voted for something very vague and ill defined, the little information they were provided was incorrect (e.g. "an extra £350m a week for the NHS"), nobody had anything even approaching a plan, the whole th…

> they voted for something very vague and ill defined Utter tosh. The consequences of a Leave vote were hammered out by Remain-supporting politicians for weeks and weeks before the referendum. The government spent 9 million GBP to publish a leaflet in support of Remain which went to every household in the UK, before the referendum. Claiming that no one knew what a Leave vote meant, is gaslighting in the extreme.

So what you are telling us is that the leave side knew what they were voting for because they saw through the lies from the leave side which said that everything the remain side was saying was "project fear". Do you honestly think you can claim that is democracy working as intended?

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#138

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jacquesm wrote: post #103
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If his aim is to come across as a lovable bumbling fool then he's failing, he comes across as a malicious pompous ass who will happily wreck his country for minimal personal gain.

The question is not "does this work on you" instead it's "does this work on enough of the population to have a significant effect".

Observing my social groups, Is answer that it does. People often question something like "how does this buffoon get to be PM".

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#139

Post by chimprich »

dtf wrote: post #48

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?

A story about Lady Hale is currently the top hit for me in Google News if I search for "barmaid".

Re: Boris Johnson uses search terms in interviews to hide negative articles?

#140

Post by maest »

k3liutZu wrote: post #49
petargyurov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

For balance, i find around 30% of results to be bad.

One really annoying thing is that python searches keep surfacing the python2 official docs instead of the python3 ones.

Ddg is my main search engine, but I find I fall back to g! queries more and more often.

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