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The Politics Thread

Discussion in 'Tottenham Hotspur' started by Wandering Yid, Feb 9, 2016.

  1. Spudulike

    Spudulike Well-Known Member

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    Just to weigh in on this one, were you logged into a Google account when you performed those searches HBIC? If so, Google will attempt to display results based on your search history and interests (arguably a little scary). Case in point, my search results differ in order to those you listed previously. See attached.

    Screen Shot 2017-09-28 at 18.57.58.png

    Google's Page Rank/RankBrain algo isn't perfect and I for one am highly cynical of Google but I can guarantee the results you see will not exactly match anyone else's from page 1-100.
     
    #4921
  2. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    Nope, I just highlighted the phrase and hit the search function.

    Which turned up The Sun and Business Insider regurgitating headlines that the Express and Torygraph were slinging at the wall two years ago.

    All of which renders all talk of search algorithms to be completely and utterly pointless for reasons other than obfuscation.
     
    #4922
  3. Spudulike

    Spudulike Well-Known Member

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    Not entirely. The single most influential factor of Google ranking is inbound link signals. It doesn't take a genius to work out that an older pages will have attracted more links than one published yesterday or the past week. Hence the older links displaying.

    If you want the most recent articles, you can either switch to news results only or use the tools at the top that are freely available to alter your results by age, country or even verbatim.

    I'm not suggesting that Google are squeaky clean however. Frankly, I think they have a worryingly unchallenged monopoly and some cosy arangments with those who have no business interfering in big data. But it's fair to say your mate Corbyn isn't the only one who's been theoretically victim to some questionable search results shall we say.
     
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  4. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    We all know that Google Ads have allowed people to buy their way to the top of the search results, as demonstrated by the Google Wars during the election campaign, but what's far more worrying is some of the search results that clearly show something more sinister at work, for example...

    please log in to view this image

    please log in to view this image

    The obvious suggestion, and one that certainly seems to fit the Stormfront article, is the sites are using bots to get their article picked up by the algorithms so they rapidly move up the search rankings - and it's certainly true that Google's algorithms are easy to exploit, as evidenced by cyberbullying ****nut LeafyIsHere exploiting Youtube's algorithms by overlaying audio of him encouraging his followers to harass whoever his target for the week happened to be on top of gameplay footage of him playing Doom, Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or whichever game happened to be high on Youtube Gaming's trending tab that week.

    ...none of which is relevant to the obvious point that The Sun et al are regurgitating smears they were throwing around to little effect two years ago as if they fail to understand they cannot shape political opinion in this country like they were able to twenty years ago, but they're going to keep it up anyway.
     
    #4924
  5. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
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    How the **** has Google allowed that to remain as their top holocaust result? <doh>
     
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  6. littleDinosaurLuke

    littleDinosaurLuke Well-Known Member

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    I did a Google search for "Trump" and it brought up "Harry Potter Top Trumps".
    Glad to know Google considers Donald an irrelevance too.
     
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  7. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    It's been updated since the article I grabbed those screencaps from, but that's the issue: it required some human oversight to correct something the algorithms deduced was perfectly fine, which is what was exploited by people who knew how.

    It's a sentence I've heard a lot in the past year or so from services that rely on algorithms to do someone's job.
    Youtubers see their ad revenue plummet literally overnight? Algorithms.
    Facebook failing to clamp down on hate speech, harassment and fraud? Algorithms.
    Valve failing to address tens of thousands of asset-flips and other shovelware polluting Steam? Algorithms.

    All of these also stem from the same issue: as the services get bigger, the company running the service move away from human oversight and put their faith in a few lines of code to perform the task of those people more efficiently - yet this allows issues to become far worse because an algorithm only knows to respond to a flag yet lacks judgment, so while an administrator can see a pattern of clearly malicious behaviour and act upon it (unless the admins are the ones behind malicious, which is an example I can't think of any obvious examples of on Not606...), an algorithm simply cannot do this - hence the default option when flagging anything on Facebook is to ask if you want to block the person as well, as that by complete coincidence would mean one less person flagging somebody's bullshit.
     
    #4927
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2017
    Spudulike and PleaseNotPoll like this.
  8. vimhawk

    vimhawk Well-Known Member

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    It's perhaps part of a wider problem that assumes people can be replaced, the stated reason that the algorithm / machine can do the job just as well but the unstated reason more likely being that the non-human option is cheaper.

    The ironic thing is whether cost saving schemes really save anything. You can "save" a lot by cladding your building in plastic or whatever isn't safe, but then something happens, people die and the retrospective cost of retrofitting all the correct stuff is probably more expensive than if it had been installed in the first place. You can employ G4S or Serco or one of these "real service replacement" companies to do your fit for work checks, but if you factor in the cost of disputes and court cases, does it save any money? You can try and reduce the staff on your trains from 2 to 1, but the cost of the resulting dispute must surely be way in excess of saving one person's salary. There are many more examples.
     
    #4928
  9. Spudulike

    Spudulike Well-Known Member

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    What hacks me off about Google on this subject is they have a large scale web spam team to tackle blackhat SEO's and slap sites with manual action penalties but can't be arsed to have a team to do their own house keeping and improve the quality of search results on very dubious subjects.

    It stinks of hypocrisy.
     
    #4929
  10. The RDBD

    The RDBD Well-Known Member

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    Not an assumption.
    At some period in time T+x, the set of activities A that automation is
    more viable for than humans (across all measurable aspects of A) ,
    is larger than it was at time T.

    Yet at any time T, there will always be activities that are beyond the
    reach of automation. For example, where are the robo brickies ??


    "the stated reason that the algorithm / machine can do the job just as well but the unstated reason more likely being that the non-human option is cheaper."

    Business is business.
    You can substitute "algorithm/machine" + "non-human" with
    "overseas worker" and still have a true statement.
     
    #4930

  11. The RDBD

    The RDBD Well-Known Member

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    Not hypocrisy, business.

    If Google started losing business because big customers
    decided they would no longer engage with search/ad service
    providers that are not rectifying the above, it would get
    sorted faster than you could type Google.

    Only things that hit the bottom line, or govt regulatory
    intervention threats, cause the desired actions.
     
    #4931
  12. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    Anyone with a working knowledge of Youtube's inner workings knows how useless Google are at dealing with things: people have been weaponising DMCA takedowns for years at this point and yet the system still hasn't been fixed so those affected not only have their videos taken down for two weeks (greatly reducing their ad revenue earnings as a result) while the system requires the person hit with the strike to give their contact details while fighting the strike, while the person throwing the false strike doesn't have to do anything and faces no recriminations for doing so - because the step after the false DMCA strike is taking the case to court, and it never goes that far.

    The copyright system is also incredibly broken to the point where the best way to make sure somebody can't claim every last penny of your ad revenue is to go out of your way to make sure so many companies try to claim your revenue at once that nobody gets a penny of it, as the following video demonstrates

    ...I should probably warn you not to watch it at work

     
    #4932
  13. The RDBD

    The RDBD Well-Known Member

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    That is easy to do. You separate penalty collection from distribution.

    Google cough up the money to state entity X due to profiting from
    infringement. The world and his wife then argue with X as to what
    their share of that money should be.

    Google no longer have that money sitting in their account, and
    any claims of non-action due to the distribution to valid parties is
    nailed.
     
    #4933
  14. Spudulike

    Spudulike Well-Known Member

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    Just did and incredibly didn't get fired... might be worth mentioning I'm self employed :emoticon-0136-giggl

    P.S. The last 10 seconds of that video is a little disturbing. Where the hell did he get that "thing" from!?
     
    #4934
  15. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    The devs of Saints Row The Third decided the best form of viral marketing for the game would be to send some real-life versions of one of the weapons from the game to various magazines and websites.

    Three guesses which weapon...
     
    #4935
  16. bigsmithy9

    bigsmithy9 Well-Known Member

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    Latest Trump thought for the day..."Puerto Rico is an island surrounded by water". Is he 6 years old or bloody ******ed?.......and he has his hand on the button!
     
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  17. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    It appears Boris Johnson is getting jealous that Trump has replaced him as the headline-hogging buffoon who has no place in politics and is going to further and further lengths to try and get mummy and daddy to pay attention to him, this time deciding it would be a genius idea for him and Liam Fox to host a launch event for a Hard Britait think tank led by Tory MEP Daniel Hannan (an MEP whose track record includes describing the NHS as "a mistake" and saying that the minimum wage should be scrapped) on the premises of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office...which means that not only has Boris contradicted official government policy (at least for the evening the event took place...) but, by allowing the event to take place on state property, has directly violated the Ministerial Code.

    Of course he'll try to play it off as just another gaffe in the hope for the media's usual "Oh Boris...!" response that he's gotten away with more times than anyone can count, even though it's a clear and blatant manoeuvre to undermine the Dire Leader on the eve of the Tory conference which just so happens to guarantee that Boris will be the centre of attention at the conference.
     
    #4937
  18. littleDinosaurLuke

    littleDinosaurLuke Well-Known Member

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    It's all about the hair.
    Both have ridiculous hair, but Trump's is dyed whereas BoJo claims his is natural.
    So when it comes to being an absurd, narcissistic, overweight, erratic, impulsive, rash bafoon, Trump has the edge.
     
    #4938
  19. And back on the subject of Trump......
    He's just lost another one!!

    US health secretary Tom Price quits after plane scandal - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41450290

    $400k ripped off, taking 26 private flights in government planes since May!
    And another three members of the Administration are under investigation for similar.

    Mind you, doesn't a bit of old fashioned Theft and Corruption make a pleasant change from all the other **** swirling around Dumpf's White House? <laugh>
     
    #4939
  20. The Premier Leagues lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee at this early Xmas present of the new UKIP logo!!

    Screenshot_20170930-061735.png
    How UKIP can possibly say they have done their due diligence is beyond me. Who did they get to do it? Stevie Wonder?? <laugh>
     
    #4940

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