5 ms·

The Sun, like the Express and the Daily Star, are "bat boy" quality UK tabloids and should probably just get blocked from being posted on HN. They were also rep

The Sun, like the Express and the Daily Star, are "bat boy" quality UK tabloids and should probably just get blocked from being posted on HN. They were also reporting (incorrectly) that "world war one diseases" were spreading at Burning Man, and there's an article in the Daily Star this morning that alleges the "ancient city of Sodom was blown up by an atomic weapon". These are not reliable sources of information, please help me in preventing them from receiving more ad revenue by not aggregating their junk news. Similarly to the scientific method, sources of information should be appropriately vetted based on past performance. Slightly off topic but I've pondered making a plugin that blocks and removes certain "news" sources of my choice from loading on my browser and showing in news aggregators and search engine results. I can avoid them on my desktop and on HN easily because I see the URL preview, but it's much harder on my phone. Someone below has also pointed out that most of these UK tabloids are noted in the Wikipedia list of potentially unreliable sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliable_sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreli...

junon 3y ago
Despite that being true, "earthquake lights" are a real phenomenon and do indeed have varied theories with no proven explanation. They have been captured and documented, etc.
- EdwardDiego 3y ago
  I've always gone for "sudden stressing of rock causing piezoelectric effect on a rather large scale that ionises gases in the atmosphere" as my Just So story of why.
  - all2 3y ago
    The earth has massive electrical fields running in it. I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of electrical discharge occurred between the ground and sky during an even that breaks conduction of said currents.
HWR_14 3y ago
Probably because the vast majority of people on the internet don't know anything about British newspapers or their quality.
- Sharlin 3y ago
  I'd say The Sun and Daily Mail are (in)famous enough that knowing their worthlessness is essentially media criticism 101. Certainly on a site like HN where the participants aren't "the vast majority of people on the internet".
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    > media criticism 101 You have to understand that this is (likely purposefully on both sides) not compulsory or well-attended. Hell, it really should be a grade 9 required class but that would make it harder to lie to future constituents. Can't have that. Same with law and various other essential life skills like drivers ed which are conspicuosly absent from general curricula.
    - Sharlin 3y ago
      I didn't mean it literally but in the idiomatic sense of being common knowledge if you're at all media literate (which I hope most HN readers are!) Where I'm from, media criticism has a fairly strong emphasis in the highschool (equivalent) curriculum, but definitely should be even stronger, especially in this post-truth era. (Drivers' ed is hardly an essential life skill in many parts of the world, btw.)
      - Obscurity4340 3y ago
        Its far more important than most of the compulsory stuff you learn first of all, and second, its better to have thr schools manage it and get it done early when its easy to provision all the materials and obviously a car which not everyone has. Lastly, media literacy is basically (as far as I'm aware) not really compulsory or required for most students. I'm saying it should be. They are the perfect age to learn about how these systems subjugate and weaponize their personal data, emotions, etc
the_af 3y ago
> "bat boy" quality Was bat boy an invention of Weekly World News? If so, WWW was satirical, with intentionally bizarre made-up stories. People were supposed to read it for the comedy, but I guess a version of Poe's Law applies and some people took it seriously. I remember one article of WWW claimed Saddam Hussein was hiding in a submarine in an American lake -- and I bet some people believed this. The Sun I imagine pretends to be a serious newspaper though.
- glitchc 3y ago
  > submarine in a lake Made me spill my coffee!
  - the_af 3y ago
    Well, I couldn't find the submarine cover, but this will SHOCK you... the actual Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: https://weeklyworldnewsvault.tumblr.com/post/130026803238/cover-of-weekly-world-news-august-19-2003 https://weeklyworldnewsvault.tumblr.com/post/130026803238/co... Warning: that site has plenty more WWW covers, you may lose a good chunk of your time perusing them.
    - mdp2021 3y ago
      With the targeted aside: > Get your career diploma at home! Edit: made even more special after the subsequent one: > More hair!! Style it fast! With Wild Growth® Hair Oil
      - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
        > Get your career diploma at home! Is it much different than getting a “diploma” drum prerecorded videos?
- labrador 3y ago
  I come from a poor working class area so believe me people didn't get the comedy. It was an early version of "muh space lasers started the Maui fire"
stevev 3y ago
Poor suggestion based on articles that you disagree with and how it was presented. I don’t understand why people jump to censorship as a solution to their own biases. If you read the article, they’re only reporting on the light. No explanation was given. Are you now denying it never happened or that you just don’t like the outlet; since they’re two different things.
- kyledrake 3y ago
  You think a user's ability to have a choice in where their content comes from is censorship? Do you think the block feature on Twitter is censorship as well? HN is not an "everything goes" platform, it has specific guidelines and policies designed to drive a higher quality conversation and higher quality sources of information, which is one of the reasons it stands out as a good aggregator for me. And I'm of the opinion that UK tabloid spam doesn't meet the criteria, not because of their political bent (I don't know what it is *), but because of their consistently wobbly and expedient relationship with the truth when it happens to be incompatible with their business model. * I'm guessing faux conservative, since at least one of them is owned by Rupert Murdoch, same owner of the famously high quality Fox News who just lost a high profile $787.5 million defamation lawsuit for false reporting on voting machines.
mdp2021 3y ago
I am not sure, many times in front of The Onion¹ I get the drive "I should post this on HN". Maybe we could have a parallel twin site for non serious "news"? Edit: ¹or other sources mixed with the serious ones: for example, the pages from Andy Borowitz on The NewYorker. This just came out in real time... https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-calls-biden-pathetic-for-needing-hunters-help-to-get-impeached https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-calls-...
- shaoonb 3y ago
  I remember a while back there was a Twitter account called "Hacker News Onion". My favourite headline: Developer accused of unreadable code refuses to comment.
- geocrasher 3y ago
  Maybe we could have a parallel twin site for non serious "news"? https://fark.com https://fark.com Yep, it's still around
mnd999 3y ago
Wikipedia has such a list of sources it considers reliable and unreliable, and The Sun is very much in the unreliable category.
- kyledrake 3y ago
  Could you post the link? I would actually love to have this as a resource.
  - gregsadetsky 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliable_sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreli... Didn’t know about this page either!
  - mnd999 3y ago
    I was thinking of this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/P...
- mdp2021 3y ago
  > Wikipedia has such a list of sources it considers reliable and unreliable Russell suggests to check where Wikipedia ranks in that list. Well, the "credibility discrimination problem" is much easier on some sources (the "Rockstar ate my Hamster" headlines runners for example).
  - jimjimjim 3y ago
    > "Rockstar ate my Hamster" I remember playing that on the amiga
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Wikipedia is not a primary source.
    - piperswe 3y ago
mcpackieh 3y ago
> The Sun [...] were also reporting (incorrectly) that Ebola was spreading at Burning Man Can you substantiate this claim? I'm searching for such an article from The Sun and can't find anything. I have found numerous stories about the burning man ebola hoax, but none of them say The Sun participated in it. I'm not saying you're lying, but maybe you fell for some fake news about fake news. I found this Reuters article about a faked screenshot of a Forbes article, purporting to show Forbes spread the hoax (they didn't): https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-burning-man-forbes/fact-check-forbes-headline-about-ebola-outbreak-at-burning-man-is-altered-idUSL1N3AJ0HJ https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-burning-man-forbes...
- kyledrake 3y ago
  They may have removed the text, regardless I removed the reference to it in my comment. They also alleged that people were getting "trench foot", or as they described it at the time, "a world war one disease". I was at Burning Man during the rain/mud, went bare foot for a few days, did not get "trench foot", nor did anyone else I knew there. Their unbelievably trashy reporting during that (everybody is fighting and getting trench warfare diseases, etc) is one of the reasons I'm unusually motivated to comment on their reliability as a source of information today.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    If anyone cares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_foot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_foot but be warned not so nice pictures Also known as: > immersion foot syndrome[6] and as a nonfreezing cold injury (NFCI) quote of cause: > It can occur in temperatures up to 16 °C (61 °F) and within as little as 13 hours. Exposure to these environmental conditions causes deterioration and destruction of the capillaries and leads to damage of the surrounding flesh.[7] Excessive sweating (hyperhidrosis) has long been regarded as a contributory cause. Unsanitary, cold, and wet conditions can also cause trench foot.[8] Idk. how warm it was there, but looking at other clothes worn probably not ~<16C, additionally even if the mud is that cold as long as you take brakes to warm up your feed e.g. in the mid day sun and don't walk through the night it still would be very unlikely. Then not having to walk in the same wet boots you have been wearing (wet) since weeks also helps. And even if some one got NFCI it likely was only a case which comparable with what people had in WW1 was quite harmless. I.e. not really what people think about when mentioning trench foot (and knowing what it's about). So all in all misleading and in a very intentional and knowing manner.
all2 3y ago
> "ancient city of Sodom was blown up by an atomic weapon" This is hyperbole at best. Sodom and Gomorrah have been confirmed to have experienced a "heat event" that caused pottery to exhibit the same chemical glazing that happens in a nuclear blast. Note that a nuke is not required for this form of glazing to appear, just very high temperatures. See https://youtu.be/SDiYb20iAsM https://youtu.be/SDiYb20iAsM for an informal discussion. I guess a partial truth is easier to sell than a complete fabrication.
Obscurity4340 3y ago
> ancient city of Sodom God, I can't even. People are in desperate need of media literacy classes. Also, what non-right wing conservative person is baited by that headline? Its so fing transparent to whom they are appealing.
- 7952 3y ago
  Those kind of storys are not written seriously and tend to be a bit satirical. They are mocking the "boffins" who do this kind of research. They don't expect the reader to believe a word of it.
  - freeopinion 3y ago
    Which is to say, that the target audience may in fact be the exact opposite of the one gp suggests.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

junon 3y ago

Despite that being true, "earthquake lights" are a real phenomenon and do indeed have varied theories with no proven explanation. They have been captured and documented, etc.

EdwardDiego 3y ago
I've always gone for "sudden stressing of rock causing piezoelectric effect on a rather large scale that ionises gases in the atmosphere" as my Just So story of why.
- all2 3y ago
  The earth has massive electrical fields running in it. I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of electrical discharge occurred between the ground and sky during an even that breaks conduction of said currents.

HWR_14 3y ago

Probably because the vast majority of people on the internet don't know anything about British newspapers or their quality.

Sharlin 3y ago
I'd say The Sun and Daily Mail are (in)famous enough that knowing their worthlessness is essentially media criticism 101. Certainly on a site like HN where the participants aren't "the vast majority of people on the internet".
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  > media criticism 101 You have to understand that this is (likely purposefully on both sides) not compulsory or well-attended. Hell, it really should be a grade 9 required class but that would make it harder to lie to future constituents. Can't have that. Same with law and various other essential life skills like drivers ed which are conspicuosly absent from general curricula.
  - Sharlin 3y ago
    I didn't mean it literally but in the idiomatic sense of being common knowledge if you're at all media literate (which I hope most HN readers are!) Where I'm from, media criticism has a fairly strong emphasis in the highschool (equivalent) curriculum, but definitely should be even stronger, especially in this post-truth era. (Drivers' ed is hardly an essential life skill in many parts of the world, btw.)
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      Its far more important than most of the compulsory stuff you learn first of all, and second, its better to have thr schools manage it and get it done early when its easy to provision all the materials and obviously a car which not everyone has. Lastly, media literacy is basically (as far as I'm aware) not really compulsory or required for most students. I'm saying it should be. They are the perfect age to learn about how these systems subjugate and weaponize their personal data, emotions, etc

the_af 3y ago

> "bat boy" quality Was bat boy an invention of Weekly World News? If so, WWW was satirical, with intentionally bizarre made-up stories. People were supposed to read it for the comedy, but I guess a version of Poe's Law applies and some people took it seriously. I remember one article of WWW claimed Saddam Hussein was hiding in a submarine in an American lake -- and I bet some people believed this. The Sun I imagine pretends to be a serious newspaper though.

glitchc 3y ago
> submarine in a lake Made me spill my coffee!
- the_af 3y ago
  Well, I couldn't find the submarine cover, but this will SHOCK you... the actual Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: https://weeklyworldnewsvault.tumblr.com/post/130026803238/cover-of-weekly-world-news-august-19-2003 https://weeklyworldnewsvault.tumblr.com/post/130026803238/co... Warning: that site has plenty more WWW covers, you may lose a good chunk of your time perusing them.
  - mdp2021 3y ago
    With the targeted aside: > Get your career diploma at home! Edit: made even more special after the subsequent one: > More hair!! Style it fast! With Wild Growth® Hair Oil
    - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      > Get your career diploma at home! Is it much different than getting a “diploma” drum prerecorded videos?
labrador 3y ago
I come from a poor working class area so believe me people didn't get the comedy. It was an early version of "muh space lasers started the Maui fire"

stevev 3y ago

Poor suggestion based on articles that you disagree with and how it was presented. I don’t understand why people jump to censorship as a solution to their own biases. If you read the article, they’re only reporting on the light. No explanation was given. Are you now denying it never happened or that you just don’t like the outlet; since they’re two different things.

kyledrake 3y ago
You think a user's ability to have a choice in where their content comes from is censorship? Do you think the block feature on Twitter is censorship as well? HN is not an "everything goes" platform, it has specific guidelines and policies designed to drive a higher quality conversation and higher quality sources of information, which is one of the reasons it stands out as a good aggregator for me. And I'm of the opinion that UK tabloid spam doesn't meet the criteria, not because of their political bent (I don't know what it is *), but because of their consistently wobbly and expedient relationship with the truth when it happens to be incompatible with their business model. * I'm guessing faux conservative, since at least one of them is owned by Rupert Murdoch, same owner of the famously high quality Fox News who just lost a high profile $787.5 million defamation lawsuit for false reporting on voting machines.

mdp2021 3y ago

I am not sure, many times in front of The Onion¹ I get the drive "I should post this on HN". Maybe we could have a parallel twin site for non serious "news"? Edit: ¹or other sources mixed with the serious ones: for example, the pages from Andy Borowitz on The NewYorker. This just came out in real time... https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-calls-biden-pathetic-for-needing-hunters-help-to-get-impeached https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-calls-...

shaoonb 3y ago
I remember a while back there was a Twitter account called "Hacker News Onion". My favourite headline: Developer accused of unreadable code refuses to comment.
geocrasher 3y ago
Maybe we could have a parallel twin site for non serious "news"? https://fark.com https://fark.com Yep, it's still around

mnd999 3y ago

Wikipedia has such a list of sources it considers reliable and unreliable, and The Sun is very much in the unreliable category.

kyledrake 3y ago
Could you post the link? I would actually love to have this as a resource.
- gregsadetsky 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliable_sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreli... Didn’t know about this page either!
- mnd999 3y ago
  I was thinking of this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/P...
mdp2021 3y ago
> Wikipedia has such a list of sources it considers reliable and unreliable Russell suggests to check where Wikipedia ranks in that list. Well, the "credibility discrimination problem" is much easier on some sources (the "Rockstar ate my Hamster" headlines runners for example).
- jimjimjim 3y ago
  > "Rockstar ate my Hamster" I remember playing that on the amiga
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Wikipedia is not a primary source.
  - piperswe 3y ago

mcpackieh 3y ago

> The Sun [...] were also reporting (incorrectly) that Ebola was spreading at Burning Man Can you substantiate this claim? I'm searching for such an article from The Sun and can't find anything. I have found numerous stories about the burning man ebola hoax, but none of them say The Sun participated in it. I'm not saying you're lying, but maybe you fell for some fake news about fake news. I found this Reuters article about a faked screenshot of a Forbes article, purporting to show Forbes spread the hoax (they didn't): https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-burning-man-forbes/fact-check-forbes-headline-about-ebola-outbreak-at-burning-man-is-altered-idUSL1N3AJ0HJ https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-burning-man-forbes...

kyledrake 3y ago
They may have removed the text, regardless I removed the reference to it in my comment. They also alleged that people were getting "trench foot", or as they described it at the time, "a world war one disease". I was at Burning Man during the rain/mud, went bare foot for a few days, did not get "trench foot", nor did anyone else I knew there. Their unbelievably trashy reporting during that (everybody is fighting and getting trench warfare diseases, etc) is one of the reasons I'm unusually motivated to comment on their reliability as a source of information today.
- dathinab 3y ago
  If anyone cares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_foot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_foot but be warned not so nice pictures Also known as: > immersion foot syndrome[6] and as a nonfreezing cold injury (NFCI) quote of cause: > It can occur in temperatures up to 16 °C (61 °F) and within as little as 13 hours. Exposure to these environmental conditions causes deterioration and destruction of the capillaries and leads to damage of the surrounding flesh.[7] Excessive sweating (hyperhidrosis) has long been regarded as a contributory cause. Unsanitary, cold, and wet conditions can also cause trench foot.[8] Idk. how warm it was there, but looking at other clothes worn probably not ~<16C, additionally even if the mud is that cold as long as you take brakes to warm up your feed e.g. in the mid day sun and don't walk through the night it still would be very unlikely. Then not having to walk in the same wet boots you have been wearing (wet) since weeks also helps. And even if some one got NFCI it likely was only a case which comparable with what people had in WW1 was quite harmless. I.e. not really what people think about when mentioning trench foot (and knowing what it's about). So all in all misleading and in a very intentional and knowing manner.

all2 3y ago

> "ancient city of Sodom was blown up by an atomic weapon" This is hyperbole at best. Sodom and Gomorrah have been confirmed to have experienced a "heat event" that caused pottery to exhibit the same chemical glazing that happens in a nuclear blast. Note that a nuke is not required for this form of glazing to appear, just very high temperatures. See https://youtu.be/SDiYb20iAsM https://youtu.be/SDiYb20iAsM for an informal discussion. I guess a partial truth is easier to sell than a complete fabrication.

Obscurity4340 3y ago

> ancient city of Sodom God, I can't even. People are in desperate need of media literacy classes. Also, what non-right wing conservative person is baited by that headline? Its so fing transparent to whom they are appealing.

7952 3y ago
Those kind of storys are not written seriously and tend to be a bit satirical. They are mocking the "boffins" who do this kind of research. They don't expect the reader to believe a word of it.
- freeopinion 3y ago
  Which is to say, that the target audience may in fact be the exact opposite of the one gp suggests.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]