4 ms·

Is there anything factually wrong with the article? I read it / fact checked and it wasn’t obviously inaccurate.

by ibash 2y ago

readthenotes1 2y ago
Iirc, biased sources are avoided here even for factually correct postings
- kamikazeturtles 2y ago
  All sources are biased to some extent
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    There's bias, and then there's this kind of bias (from WP): MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria. In one contentious article, MintPress News asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government, a claim pushed by the Russian and Syrian governments and rejected by much of the international community. I wouldn't trust them to tell the time of day.
    - kamikazeturtles 2y ago
      In Syria, Obama armed a bunch of "moderates" as he put it. They were all just extremist terrorists. Our media covered for him. Why don't you equally distrust our media?
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        Why don't you equally distrust our media? Because of the former's highly Kool-aidy and ideological slant, and the nonsense conspiracy theories it regularly peddles. You don't notice that stuff?
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Everything is biased; the main difference is how good they are at hiding it. Heck, Wikipedia’s cofounder calls it “propaganda” and said the site has “become merely left-wing advocacy essays.”
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    No, the difference is whether they try to be unbiased or not. Wikipedia used to try, somewhat, occasionally. Now they are indeed "merely left-wing advocacy essays.” Hardly any news outlets are trying anymore, so I can see why you think that.
    - runarberg 2y ago
      Trying to be unbiased is a futile effort, and most journalists know that. What good journalists do is take their inherit bias into account and adjust for it. The reporting should be truthful, and people should know the facts after reading it. Biased media often editorializes the truth so it conveys one message rather then another. This can be bad, or it can be good, it depends on the message. When the message is “a genocidal army is doing a bad thing”, I lean towards this editorializing being good actually.
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        > Trying to be unbiased is a futile effort That seems to be the conventional wisdom. I sometimes get on newspapers.com (not free, unfortunately) for my articles, and for the Pullman Strike series I used the NYT for excerpts. This was 1894-95. So no, it's not futile; it's just difficult. They were doing it, and that's part of what made them the "newspaper of record" (a rep which they're busy squandering now). I'll refrain from the shameless self-promotion for a change and not include links, but I posted all of them to HN. Or of course you could use the 7-day free trial on newspapers.com. As for your last, sentence: no, the adjective "genocidal" is not OK. "Unbiased" would be a description of what the army is doing, with another story "Does this qualify as genocide?" Or quotes from organizations calling it genocide.
xenospn 2y ago
Did you miss the part where they claim Israel killed more than 180,000 people in a year?
- Qem 2y ago
  Those figures are credible, based on research [1][2] that estimated total deaths including those by secondary effects from the attacks, like diseases and famine spread by purposeful destruction of medical[3][4], water treatment/sanitation[5][6] infrastructure and crops[7]. The figures quoted more often in the media, over 40,000 people killed, reflect only people that were directly killed and whose bodies could be recovered and identified, and so are gross underestimates of total loss of life. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/12/gaza-death-toll-indirect-casualties https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/12/gaza-d... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-images-reveal-israeli-destruction-of-hospitals-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-... [4] https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/500-healthcare-workers-killed-during-israels-military-assault-gaza https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/... [5] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-29/ty-article/.premium/idf-commanders-gave-order-to-blow-up-rafah-reservoir-army-suspects-breach-of-intl-law/00000190-fd90-d5ef-a5fe-ff9ec3ea0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-29/ty-article/.p... [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SLwaodt_Rw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SLwaodt_Rw [7] https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/gaza-geospatial-data-shows-intensifying-damage-to-cropland/en https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/gaza-geospatial-data-sho...
  - Cupertino95014 2y ago
    He quotes from The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Haaretz /s How many of those killed were actually Hamas fighters?
  - xenospn 2y ago
    If you have to lie to defend your position, your position is not worth defending.
compsciphd 2y ago
I don't think you read it that closely, or are operating with the same biases as the author, as arguably yes, there are obvious inaccuracies. A simple example "Unit 8200, for example, has been the source of much of the world’s most infamous spying software, including Cellebrite and Pegasus" Cellebrite and Pegasus aren't products of Unit 8200. They are not the source of them. At best one can say that alumni of 8200 created them (or if one wants to get the closest the source, "products" (i.e. alumni) of 8200 created them). The language they use is not accurate and they do it purposefully to be inflammatory. If they wanted to write Unit 8200 has trained a pipeline of people that these companies can gobble up, that would be accurate. But how is that fundamentally different than MIT, Stanford et al training a pipeline of people that go to big tech firms that also arguably violate privacy? Would we blame the schools for the privacy violations or simply blame the companies their alumni work for?
- ibash 2y ago
  I appreciate you pointing out the inaccuracies. Was actually hoping for that. > But how is that fundamentally different than MIT, Stanford et al training a pipeline of people that go to big tech firms that also arguably violate privacy? Unit 8200 is a military intelligence unit focused on online spying and hacking right? Isn’t the implied fundamental difference clear?
  - tguvot 2y ago
    you do know that MIT and a bunch of other us universities doing a bunch of military research/engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Affiliated_Research_Center?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Affiliated_Research... https://ras.mit.edu/grant-and-contract-administration/sponsor-information/department-defense https://ras.mit.edu/grant-and-contract-administration/sponso... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory?useskin... you should also consider how much of different research about cybersecurity/hacking comes from universities.
    - ibash 2y ago

Is there anything factually wrong with the article? I read it / fact checked and it wasn’t obviously inaccurate.

by ibash 2y ago

Is there anything factually wrong with the article? I read it / fact checked and it wasn’t obviously inaccurate.

readthenotes1 2y ago

Iirc, biased sources are avoided here even for factually correct postings

kamikazeturtles 2y ago
All sources are biased to some extent
- aguaviva 2y ago
  There's bias, and then there's this kind of bias (from WP): MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria. In one contentious article, MintPress News asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government, a claim pushed by the Russian and Syrian governments and rejected by much of the international community. I wouldn't trust them to tell the time of day.
  - kamikazeturtles 2y ago
    In Syria, Obama armed a bunch of "moderates" as he put it. They were all just extremist terrorists. Our media covered for him. Why don't you equally distrust our media?
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      Why don't you equally distrust our media? Because of the former's highly Kool-aidy and ideological slant, and the nonsense conspiracy theories it regularly peddles. You don't notice that stuff?
gjsman-1000 2y ago
Everything is biased; the main difference is how good they are at hiding it. Heck, Wikipedia’s cofounder calls it “propaganda” and said the site has “become merely left-wing advocacy essays.”
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  No, the difference is whether they try to be unbiased or not. Wikipedia used to try, somewhat, occasionally. Now they are indeed "merely left-wing advocacy essays.” Hardly any news outlets are trying anymore, so I can see why you think that.
  - runarberg 2y ago
    Trying to be unbiased is a futile effort, and most journalists know that. What good journalists do is take their inherit bias into account and adjust for it. The reporting should be truthful, and people should know the facts after reading it. Biased media often editorializes the truth so it conveys one message rather then another. This can be bad, or it can be good, it depends on the message. When the message is “a genocidal army is doing a bad thing”, I lean towards this editorializing being good actually.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      > Trying to be unbiased is a futile effort That seems to be the conventional wisdom. I sometimes get on newspapers.com (not free, unfortunately) for my articles, and for the Pullman Strike series I used the NYT for excerpts. This was 1894-95. So no, it's not futile; it's just difficult. They were doing it, and that's part of what made them the "newspaper of record" (a rep which they're busy squandering now). I'll refrain from the shameless self-promotion for a change and not include links, but I posted all of them to HN. Or of course you could use the 7-day free trial on newspapers.com. As for your last, sentence: no, the adjective "genocidal" is not OK. "Unbiased" would be a description of what the army is doing, with another story "Does this qualify as genocide?" Or quotes from organizations calling it genocide.

xenospn 2y ago

Did you miss the part where they claim Israel killed more than 180,000 people in a year?

Qem 2y ago
Those figures are credible, based on research [1][2] that estimated total deaths including those by secondary effects from the attacks, like diseases and famine spread by purposeful destruction of medical[3][4], water treatment/sanitation[5][6] infrastructure and crops[7]. The figures quoted more often in the media, over 40,000 people killed, reflect only people that were directly killed and whose bodies could be recovered and identified, and so are gross underestimates of total loss of life. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/12/gaza-death-toll-indirect-casualties https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/12/gaza-d... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-images-reveal-israeli-destruction-of-hospitals-in-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/4/18/satellite-... [4] https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/500-healthcare-workers-killed-during-israels-military-assault-gaza https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/... [5] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-29/ty-article/.premium/idf-commanders-gave-order-to-blow-up-rafah-reservoir-army-suspects-breach-of-intl-law/00000190-fd90-d5ef-a5fe-ff9ec3ea0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-29/ty-article/.p... [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SLwaodt_Rw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SLwaodt_Rw [7] https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/gaza-geospatial-data-shows-intensifying-damage-to-cropland/en https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/gaza-geospatial-data-sho...
- Cupertino95014 2y ago
  He quotes from The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Haaretz /s How many of those killed were actually Hamas fighters?
- xenospn 2y ago
  If you have to lie to defend your position, your position is not worth defending.

compsciphd 2y ago

I don't think you read it that closely, or are operating with the same biases as the author, as arguably yes, there are obvious inaccuracies. A simple example "Unit 8200, for example, has been the source of much of the world’s most infamous spying software, including Cellebrite and Pegasus" Cellebrite and Pegasus aren't products of Unit 8200. They are not the source of them. At best one can say that alumni of 8200 created them (or if one wants to get the closest the source, "products" (i.e. alumni) of 8200 created them). The language they use is not accurate and they do it purposefully to be inflammatory. If they wanted to write Unit 8200 has trained a pipeline of people that these companies can gobble up, that would be accurate. But how is that fundamentally different than MIT, Stanford et al training a pipeline of people that go to big tech firms that also arguably violate privacy? Would we blame the schools for the privacy violations or simply blame the companies their alumni work for?

ibash 2y ago
I appreciate you pointing out the inaccuracies. Was actually hoping for that. > But how is that fundamentally different than MIT, Stanford et al training a pipeline of people that go to big tech firms that also arguably violate privacy? Unit 8200 is a military intelligence unit focused on online spying and hacking right? Isn’t the implied fundamental difference clear?
- tguvot 2y ago
  you do know that MIT and a bunch of other us universities doing a bunch of military research/engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Affiliated_Research_Center?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Affiliated_Research... https://ras.mit.edu/grant-and-contract-administration/sponsor-information/department-defense https://ras.mit.edu/grant-and-contract-administration/sponso... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory?useskin... you should also consider how much of different research about cybersecurity/hacking comes from universities.
  - ibash 2y ago