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Ask HN: Urgent connection to Twitter support

875 points by yuvadam 12y ago

HN, For the past few hours Israel and Gaza have been exchanging rocket and missile attacks, with many casualties on both sides. I am the admin for an automated emergency alert twitter feed that thousands of users depend on to receive alerts on incoming attacks. Currently, we are approaching API limits and require immediate relaxation of some of the limits.Support tickets have been filed, but no answers just yet, and escalation is required. Any connections to Twitter support staff that can help us expedite handling of this ticket would be awesome, and would be helpful to many who depend on this feed during this difficult time. Thanks, @yuvadm

sjs382 12y ago
What account is this that's hitting the limits? Or what application?
- yuvadam 12y ago
  No app, just a simple feed that we post tweets to from various sources via API. Further details will be gladly discussed with @support staff.
  - melvinmt 12y ago
    Can you send me the twitter handle of the feed? My family lives in Hadera and the sirene didn't go off for the last strike. Would be good to follow this account as well.
    - hadoukenio 12y ago
      I have zero connection to the area or the conflict, but I too want to follow the feed.
      - yuvadam 12y ago
        Go ahead, it's @rotternews but be warned it is very high traffic, might want to add it to a list rather than follow, as most of our users do.
        hadoukenio 12y ago
        Thanks for that!
  - macNchz 12y ago
    Why are you being secretive about the details? You may never hear back from Twitter support, but in hiding things you may miss ideas, opportunities and resources that HN users can provide to scale your feed in different ways.
    - yuvadam 12y ago
      No reason to keep things secret, it's just that the entire content is highly localized (specifically, it's all Hebrew) and wouldn't mean much to non-local users.
      - mayneack 12y ago
        Because it's controversial I assume.
exacube 12y ago
You should probably include your contact, and twitter handle?
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Included, my personal handle is @yuvadm
adeptus 12y ago
Possible Work around?.... Create second twitter account, and announce it from the first twitter account periodically. Make new announcements on second twitter account.
- yuvadam 12y ago
  We'd rather not fragment our content in this way, and even if we did, updating our automated scripts to handle this scenario wouldn't be trivial.
arasmussen 12y ago
Messaged some friends who used to intern at Twitter and know people. Good luck!
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Thanks!
Link- 12y ago
What about the below stats live from Ghaza? I think these Palestinian's twitter API quota has already been reached and went beyond any limit too. - 447 heavy rockets, - 374 air strike aggression, - 39 marine bombs, - 111 targeted homes, - 17 homes completely destroyed, - 95 homes partially destroyed, - 2 masjids attacked, - 1 hospital attacked, - 1 ambulance car attacked. I can understand war, I understand loss and fear, but I can't understand how such a silly thing has reached Hacker News's front page.
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Please, I completely understand, and trust me our views on this issue aren't very different. My goal is to disseminate breaking news and alerts as quickly and widely as possible, to whomever needs it.
  - Link- 12y ago
    As I do understand and empathize with your cause. And trust that I'm not looking for a political argument or the likes. The comment above is a painful cry out towards the absurdity of the situation in an attempt to shed some light on the colossal 'gap' between the worries of both sides..
    - pron 12y ago
      Yes, the gap is certainly absurd (though I'm not sure about the validity of the numbers you quoted). But there are many absurdities about this conflict. This is what I posted here during the previous spat (exactly 600 days ago): The mutual bloodshed is terrible, and, as a resident of Tel Aviv I'm personally affected, but there is one thing that has always perplexed me a bit, which is the perception of the actual ferocity of the conflict. Obviously, every death is a terrible loss, but this forum is fond of numbers, so while we're on the subject, here are some numbers: The total number of deaths in the entire Israeli-Arab conflict over the past 70 years or so, is - according to Wikipedia - under 100,000. Out of which, about 25,000 are Israeli, a similar number are Palestinians, and the rest, I guess are casualties of all the other fighting arab countries combined, although the total seems to me a bit high. That's the total for the past 70 years. By comparison, in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, Wikipedia puts the number of deaths at about 30,000 in each country in the last year alone. And the Mexican drug war has claimed the lives of about 56,000 since 2006; some estimates go as high as 100,000. So, not to compare suffering, but the entire Israeli-Arab conflict has claimed, over the last 70 years, more or less the same number of lives as the drug war in Mexico in the past 6. In short, both sides are trying to recruit the world's support for what is, in reality, a very low-intensity conflict compared to just about any other violent conflict, anywhere else in the world.
leccine 12y ago
I prefer planning over firefighting...
- yuvadam 12y ago
  I actually contacted @support 3 months ago about this problem, and they dismissed it as a non-issue.
  - leccine 12y ago
    I mean not relying on Twitter on communicating your message...
- jawns 12y ago
  We all do. But I think the time to fault them for not anticipating this is later. Right now, if the only thing you can contribute is, "They should have been better prepared," I don't see that as particularly helpful.
  - leccine 12y ago
    Sorry for not being helpful. At least the other comments were so freakin' helpful I heard that they stopped shooting from Gaza. You know, the opinion of Internet people matter.
bilal2206 12y ago
Is your twitter feed informing about the bombs falling on Gaza? (no sarcasm) A link to the twitter feed? Thanks.
- jnardiello 12y ago
  I'm interested on this as well.
- yuvadam 12y ago
  It does, but only based on second-hand reports. See my additional response on the sibling thread.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
anigbrowl 12y ago
I'm curious, is this service service equally available/relevant to civilians on both sides of the conflict, or only one? I don't ask to be judgmental, I recognize that politically/legally it may not even be possible to serve both sides. I just wondered if the automated nature of the service allows for it to be apolitical.
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Unfortunately, it caters mostly to the Israeli side, as it is in Hebrew and relies on Hebrew sources of information. I would very much be interested in helping build a similar system for Palestinians in Gaza, but from past attempts to organize similar cooperations, help is not necessarily wanted. That being said, I am aware of several Palestinian users in Gaza who do follow this account for various purposes.
  - djyaz1200 12y ago
    Respect the intent to make a tool for peace, not a weapon. Want to point out that "Various purposes" might include the people shooting the missiles seeing if/where they land? These communications might better be conducted via bulk PM?
    - yuvadam 12y ago
      Possibly, but most reports never mention specific coordinates. Israelis already have complete drone coverage of Gaza Strip, they don't need reports on hits. Palestinians cannot possibly use coordinates to aim homebrew rockets being used. Hit radius is e.g. around 1km for far range rockets.
      - aerialfish 12y ago
        During the last flare up with Hezbollah, my friends in the Haifa suburbs told me that there were some gag orders on some rockets that landed near them to prevent Hezbollah from knowing that they had successful hits. But I suppose the rockets of Hamas vs Hezbollah would be different. EDIT: Seems like their rockets are reaching Tel Aviv so I guess they aren't as crude as they used to be...
marcosscriven 12y ago
What's the actual account you're posting these emergency alerts on? I looked at your @yuvadm account and couldn't see any retweets. (Side note, I'd perhaps change your Archimedes joke in your Twitter description, given where you are and what you're doing)
- reledi 12y ago
  https://twitter.com/rotternews https://twitter.com/rotternews Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093
Aldo_MX 12y ago
I understand the times are critical, and I apologize in advance for giving a suggestion at a bad time like this, but while @support answers you, why not check Faye[1] + HAProxy[2]? This may not be as convenient as Twitter, but in case the answer from Twitter is negative, you can use these tools to broadcast updates in real time (I assume at this point, scalability is already an issue, and this is why I added HAProxy to the formula). [1] http://faye.jcoglan.com http://faye.jcoglan.com [2] http://www.haproxy.org http://www.haproxy.org
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion! Twitter is being used since many users already have it setup including push notifications. I would love to build a push system of my own (it's also right up my alley), but onboarding users to a proprietary system would be significantly harder.
devilsdevil 12y ago
This is horrible. But you can be sure if the US were launching missles and a Twitter feed were used to warn the targets then the owner of the account would be an enemy of the state. War is horrible. The internet brings us all closer to it. But you are basically asking an American corporation to supply a war effort with ammunition to your side.
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Again, I will not comment on the political aspect of this specific campaign. (Hit my feed to get a sense of my personal opinions if you are truly interested.) I care about information dissemination and about helping humans on both side of a conflict to have better insight into the chaos that is occurring around them.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
hnriot 12y ago
"In the words of Archimedes, give me a long enough lever, and a place to rest it - or I will kill one hostage every hour." Sure - that will get you priority with Twitter support!
- yuvadam 12y ago
  https://xkcd.com/857/ https://xkcd.com/857/
  - hnriot 12y ago
    right - that really makes it fine. I get the joke, I just don't think that sort of comment will help their cause much.
raverbashing 12y ago
Maybe you should think about putting up an rss feed, or throttling yourself the information posted to kind of sum them up in the meantime
- yuvadam 12y ago
  Good suggestion. An RSS feed sort of exists already, and twitter is just a better vehicle to deliver these alerts. We could try to throttle ourselves, and better filter e.g. duplicates, that is true.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    I think if the focus is mobile you can try setting up a very lightweight page with the latest events (with a cache in front, something that is updated every 1min or maybe 5min should be enough)
    - Blackthorn 12y ago
      They need real time. 5 minutes is not "real time". Twitter is real time. They need to meet their audience where their audience can meet them. Just about every phone nowadays can access Twitter in an immediate and obvious way. Twitter will meet their audience where their audience needs to be met.
      - raverbashing 12y ago
        Actually the definition of real time is: it meets the time constraint of your problem. It doesn't matter if this time constraint is 1ms, 1s or 1h. Of course it's harder to meet a 1ms time constraint so most problems fall into that category. Hence, if their time constraint is 5min, fine by them, otherwise the question stands: what is their constraint. And Twitter is not real time (this is obvious if you ever used it - it is more visible in the mobile version), there's no guarantee that if a tweet was sent by an account A in time T and the timeline of someone who follows A is opened some seconds later that tweet will show up.
junk3d 12y ago
I have no contact in twitter, but you can try contacting twitter support via https://www.linkedin.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/ There are about 3k people from twitter on linkedin. I am sure one of them might be able to help you.
tenken 12y ago
just respect the usage limits like any other service being provided for you for free.
bhartzer 12y ago
Not sure if it will help, but I've contact a few Twitter folks I know and alerted them to this thread.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
stephenitis 12y ago
Is HN the new emergency technical support now? I thought twitter would have a redphone to handle request like these...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 12y ago
  No, HN is not for technical support requests. We normally demote these, but didn't see this one on the front page until a minute ago. It's nice that it did some good, but we're burying it now.
- mayneack 12y ago
  Maybe they can help out with this gmail outage that has been affecting some people (including me) for more than 2 weeks. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/lh-xy5WAkac%5B1-25-false%5D https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/lh-xy5W...
yuvadam 12y ago
Success! Twitter @support just got back to me with news that the rate limits have been increased! HN, you are awesome!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- vegancap 12y ago
  Keep up the fantastic work! Glad to hear Twitter were helpful.
- elwell 12y ago
  See, HNers, procrastination habits can be put to good use!
- HannibalLecter 12y ago
  Let's hope this saves lives.
joshfraser 12y ago
Here's a link to the Google Translated feed for @rotternews. (I used the mobile version due to formatting issues w/ the standard version) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=iw&tl=en&u=https://mobile.twitter.com/rotternews&usg=ALkJrhihAUyj_ahsD6rMj4qEOBGq30-7eQ https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...
- pron 12y ago
  If anyone reads it, please don't mistake it for a mainstream Israeli news organization. Rotter News is a fringe right wing news website.
  - davidkatz 12y ago
    It is. It also happens to be very good at reporting live rocket hits fast, which makes it a valuable resource regardless of their politics (which I don't agree with).
- bilal2206 12y ago
  This does not look like an emergency alert twitter feed, but more a news feed website about Israël.
korzun 12y ago
No links to your service. Running 'emergency feed' that has thousands of users depending on it with API limits without factoring in rate limiting ahead of time. Not to mention that Israel has active defense systems that alert your general area via sirens when missiles are coming. Why is this on front page?
- serf 12y ago
  because it's not very common that this community can potentially pitch in to save lives on an immediate basis, and this happens to be one of those occasions. those relying on the service should not be penalized by the software development practices of the person who wrote it with the best of intentions, and the opportunity existed for that to be avoided via community outreach (and it worked).
  - korzun 12y ago
    Why would anybody in Israel rely on such 'service' when they have fully automated missile detection system that sounds alarms within the region of possible impact. Not to mention that twitter feed that gets it's news from another web site is a giant waste of time if you are trying to avoid rockets. It seems to me you drank the kool-aid, without any fact checking. If you want to do the 'lives' angle, if my life was at risk I would rely on billion dollar missile defense system. Not a delayed Twitter feed.
    - Blahah 12y ago
      If my life was at risk I'd probably not restrict myself to one source of information about possible sources of impending death.
    - myrdev 12y ago
      Given some of the posts elsewhere in the thread, that automated warning system isn't foolproof, so more info is better.
    - judah 12y ago
      Alarm sounding isn't totally reliable. One rocket hit a northern city, Hadera, 60 miles outside of Gaza today. No alarm that instance, I'm told.
msantos 12y ago
This is probably relevant: https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/486203341622370304 https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/486203341622370304 "Peter Lerner Israel Defense Forces Spokesman for International Media & Commander of the IDF Social Media activities.." Download code red app to see what's happening in Israel & where rockets are landing https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/red-alert-israel/id873642097?ls=1&mt=8
reubeningber 12y ago
Keep up the good work!!!
ar7hur 12y ago
To put things in context, Israel killed at least 24 people in Gaza today [1], including children. Did they have access to Twitter, let alone any telecommunication mean, let alone food and water? Sorry, but I really don't see how your twitter account being rate-limited or whatever has the slightest importance in this tragedy. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...
- Forgotmypw12 12y ago
  To put things in context, after receiving a warning call from the IDF that their building was going to be bombed, the head of the household ushered the children onto the roof as human shields. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...
  - Domenic_S 12y ago
    Shameful that you're being downvoted. FTA: > Official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that six were killed. Those killed were forming a "human shield" on the roof of a home belonging to members of Hamas' militant wing, Palestinian sources said. Two were children, WAFA and Palestinian medical sources said.
    - Grue3 12y ago
      Ah, same tactic Putin's bandits are using in Ukraine. Absolutely despicable.
- hyperliner 12y ago
  He is just trying to do whatever he can on the side of the conflict he can help out. It's a war, and collateral damage is, unfortunately, inevitable.
kungfooguru 12y ago
I think you mean, "Many casualties on the Palestinian side." Has ANYONE been killed in Israel? While Gaza is bombarded and dozens are dead, including children. Don't try to equate the oppressor with the oppressed.
- gamegoblin 12y ago
  Casualty != killed That being said, I suspect you are correct about a disparity in numbers on one side.
- judah 12y ago
  Nor is the oppressor the side with fewer casualties. Germany lost far more soldiers and civilians in the Second World War, yet that racist regime were clealy the oppressors, whose end came only by force. So it is with Hamas.
  - rlucas 12y ago
    Check your historical figures. There's no possible definition X of the major Allies (hint: USSR) for which you can support your claim that "Germany lost far more soldiers [or] civilians" than X. You're smoking crack by like an order of magnitude.
  - justin66 12y ago
    > Germany lost far more soldiers and civilians in the Second World War Not more than the Russians...
  - stronglikedan 12y ago
    You spelled "Israel" wrong.
  - lostlogin 12y ago
    It's annoying when people we don't like win elections isn't it? EDIT: Which countries weren't racist in the second world war? All the allied countries I know anything about certainly were.
judk 12y ago
Problem has been solved, mods please backpage the rageful Israel-vs-Palestine debate.
- EGreg 12y ago
  what does backpaging mean?
raphaelrk 12y ago
This thread brings out a lot of partisanship. yuvadm can't warn others of incoming rocket attacks without being criticized for it? Are people upset that he could potentially be reducing casualties? Ridiculous. Spew hate elsewhere.

875 points by yuvadam 12y ago

sjs382 12y ago

What account is this that's hitting the limits? Or what application?

yuvadam 12y ago
No app, just a simple feed that we post tweets to from various sources via API. Further details will be gladly discussed with @support staff.
- melvinmt 12y ago
  Can you send me the twitter handle of the feed? My family lives in Hadera and the sirene didn't go off for the last strike. Would be good to follow this account as well.
  - hadoukenio 12y ago
    I have zero connection to the area or the conflict, but I too want to follow the feed.
    - yuvadam 12y ago
      Go ahead, it's @rotternews but be warned it is very high traffic, might want to add it to a list rather than follow, as most of our users do.
      - hadoukenio 12y ago
        Thanks for that!
- macNchz 12y ago
  Why are you being secretive about the details? You may never hear back from Twitter support, but in hiding things you may miss ideas, opportunities and resources that HN users can provide to scale your feed in different ways.
  - yuvadam 12y ago
    No reason to keep things secret, it's just that the entire content is highly localized (specifically, it's all Hebrew) and wouldn't mean much to non-local users.
    - mayneack 12y ago
      Because it's controversial I assume.

exacube 12y ago

You should probably include your contact, and twitter handle?

yuvadam 12y ago
Included, my personal handle is @yuvadm

adeptus 12y ago

Possible Work around?.... Create second twitter account, and announce it from the first twitter account periodically. Make new announcements on second twitter account.

yuvadam 12y ago
We'd rather not fragment our content in this way, and even if we did, updating our automated scripts to handle this scenario wouldn't be trivial.

arasmussen 12y ago

Messaged some friends who used to intern at Twitter and know people. Good luck!

yuvadam 12y ago
Thanks!

Link- 12y ago

What about the below stats live from Ghaza? I think these Palestinian's twitter API quota has already been reached and went beyond any limit too. - 447 heavy rockets, - 374 air strike aggression, - 39 marine bombs, - 111 targeted homes, - 17 homes completely destroyed, - 95 homes partially destroyed, - 2 masjids attacked, - 1 hospital attacked, - 1 ambulance car attacked. I can understand war, I understand loss and fear, but I can't understand how such a silly thing has reached Hacker News's front page.

yuvadam 12y ago
Please, I completely understand, and trust me our views on this issue aren't very different. My goal is to disseminate breaking news and alerts as quickly and widely as possible, to whomever needs it.
- Link- 12y ago
  As I do understand and empathize with your cause. And trust that I'm not looking for a political argument or the likes. The comment above is a painful cry out towards the absurdity of the situation in an attempt to shed some light on the colossal 'gap' between the worries of both sides..
  - pron 12y ago
    Yes, the gap is certainly absurd (though I'm not sure about the validity of the numbers you quoted). But there are many absurdities about this conflict. This is what I posted here during the previous spat (exactly 600 days ago): The mutual bloodshed is terrible, and, as a resident of Tel Aviv I'm personally affected, but there is one thing that has always perplexed me a bit, which is the perception of the actual ferocity of the conflict. Obviously, every death is a terrible loss, but this forum is fond of numbers, so while we're on the subject, here are some numbers: The total number of deaths in the entire Israeli-Arab conflict over the past 70 years or so, is - according to Wikipedia - under 100,000. Out of which, about 25,000 are Israeli, a similar number are Palestinians, and the rest, I guess are casualties of all the other fighting arab countries combined, although the total seems to me a bit high. That's the total for the past 70 years. By comparison, in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, Wikipedia puts the number of deaths at about 30,000 in each country in the last year alone. And the Mexican drug war has claimed the lives of about 56,000 since 2006; some estimates go as high as 100,000. So, not to compare suffering, but the entire Israeli-Arab conflict has claimed, over the last 70 years, more or less the same number of lives as the drug war in Mexico in the past 6. In short, both sides are trying to recruit the world's support for what is, in reality, a very low-intensity conflict compared to just about any other violent conflict, anywhere else in the world.

leccine 12y ago

I prefer planning over firefighting...

yuvadam 12y ago
I actually contacted @support 3 months ago about this problem, and they dismissed it as a non-issue.
- leccine 12y ago
  I mean not relying on Twitter on communicating your message...
jawns 12y ago
We all do. But I think the time to fault them for not anticipating this is later. Right now, if the only thing you can contribute is, "They should have been better prepared," I don't see that as particularly helpful.
- leccine 12y ago
  Sorry for not being helpful. At least the other comments were so freakin' helpful I heard that they stopped shooting from Gaza. You know, the opinion of Internet people matter.

bilal2206 12y ago

Is your twitter feed informing about the bombs falling on Gaza? (no sarcasm) A link to the twitter feed? Thanks.

jnardiello 12y ago
I'm interested on this as well.
yuvadam 12y ago
It does, but only based on second-hand reports. See my additional response on the sibling thread.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

anigbrowl 12y ago

I'm curious, is this service service equally available/relevant to civilians on both sides of the conflict, or only one? I don't ask to be judgmental, I recognize that politically/legally it may not even be possible to serve both sides. I just wondered if the automated nature of the service allows for it to be apolitical.

yuvadam 12y ago
Unfortunately, it caters mostly to the Israeli side, as it is in Hebrew and relies on Hebrew sources of information. I would very much be interested in helping build a similar system for Palestinians in Gaza, but from past attempts to organize similar cooperations, help is not necessarily wanted. That being said, I am aware of several Palestinian users in Gaza who do follow this account for various purposes.
- djyaz1200 12y ago
  Respect the intent to make a tool for peace, not a weapon. Want to point out that "Various purposes" might include the people shooting the missiles seeing if/where they land? These communications might better be conducted via bulk PM?
  - yuvadam 12y ago
    Possibly, but most reports never mention specific coordinates. Israelis already have complete drone coverage of Gaza Strip, they don't need reports on hits. Palestinians cannot possibly use coordinates to aim homebrew rockets being used. Hit radius is e.g. around 1km for far range rockets.
    - aerialfish 12y ago
      During the last flare up with Hezbollah, my friends in the Haifa suburbs told me that there were some gag orders on some rockets that landed near them to prevent Hezbollah from knowing that they had successful hits. But I suppose the rockets of Hamas vs Hezbollah would be different. EDIT: Seems like their rockets are reaching Tel Aviv so I guess they aren't as crude as they used to be...

marcosscriven 12y ago

What's the actual account you're posting these emergency alerts on? I looked at your @yuvadm account and couldn't see any retweets. (Side note, I'd perhaps change your Archimedes joke in your Twitter description, given where you are and what you're doing)

reledi 12y ago
https://twitter.com/rotternews https://twitter.com/rotternews Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093

Aldo_MX 12y ago

I understand the times are critical, and I apologize in advance for giving a suggestion at a bad time like this, but while @support answers you, why not check Faye[1] + HAProxy[2]? This may not be as convenient as Twitter, but in case the answer from Twitter is negative, you can use these tools to broadcast updates in real time (I assume at this point, scalability is already an issue, and this is why I added HAProxy to the formula). [1] http://faye.jcoglan.com http://faye.jcoglan.com [2] http://www.haproxy.org http://www.haproxy.org

yuvadam 12y ago
Thanks for the suggestion! Twitter is being used since many users already have it setup including push notifications. I would love to build a push system of my own (it's also right up my alley), but onboarding users to a proprietary system would be significantly harder.

devilsdevil 12y ago

This is horrible. But you can be sure if the US were launching missles and a Twitter feed were used to warn the targets then the owner of the account would be an enemy of the state. War is horrible. The internet brings us all closer to it. But you are basically asking an American corporation to supply a war effort with ammunition to your side.

yuvadam 12y ago
Again, I will not comment on the political aspect of this specific campaign. (Hit my feed to get a sense of my personal opinions if you are truly interested.) I care about information dissemination and about helping humans on both side of a conflict to have better insight into the chaos that is occurring around them.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

hnriot 12y ago

"In the words of Archimedes, give me a long enough lever, and a place to rest it - or I will kill one hostage every hour." Sure - that will get you priority with Twitter support!

yuvadam 12y ago
https://xkcd.com/857/ https://xkcd.com/857/
- hnriot 12y ago
  right - that really makes it fine. I get the joke, I just don't think that sort of comment will help their cause much.

raverbashing 12y ago

Maybe you should think about putting up an rss feed, or throttling yourself the information posted to kind of sum them up in the meantime

yuvadam 12y ago
Good suggestion. An RSS feed sort of exists already, and twitter is just a better vehicle to deliver these alerts. We could try to throttle ourselves, and better filter e.g. duplicates, that is true.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  I think if the focus is mobile you can try setting up a very lightweight page with the latest events (with a cache in front, something that is updated every 1min or maybe 5min should be enough)
  - Blackthorn 12y ago
    They need real time. 5 minutes is not "real time". Twitter is real time. They need to meet their audience where their audience can meet them. Just about every phone nowadays can access Twitter in an immediate and obvious way. Twitter will meet their audience where their audience needs to be met.
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Actually the definition of real time is: it meets the time constraint of your problem. It doesn't matter if this time constraint is 1ms, 1s or 1h. Of course it's harder to meet a 1ms time constraint so most problems fall into that category. Hence, if their time constraint is 5min, fine by them, otherwise the question stands: what is their constraint. And Twitter is not real time (this is obvious if you ever used it - it is more visible in the mobile version), there's no guarantee that if a tweet was sent by an account A in time T and the timeline of someone who follows A is opened some seconds later that tweet will show up.

junk3d 12y ago

I have no contact in twitter, but you can try contacting twitter support via https://www.linkedin.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/ There are about 3k people from twitter on linkedin. I am sure one of them might be able to help you.

tenken 12y ago

just respect the usage limits like any other service being provided for you for free.

bhartzer 12y ago

Not sure if it will help, but I've contact a few Twitter folks I know and alerted them to this thread.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

stephenitis 12y ago

Is HN the new emergency technical support now? I thought twitter would have a redphone to handle request like these...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dang 12y ago
No, HN is not for technical support requests. We normally demote these, but didn't see this one on the front page until a minute ago. It's nice that it did some good, but we're burying it now.
mayneack 12y ago
Maybe they can help out with this gmail outage that has been affecting some people (including me) for more than 2 weeks. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/lh-xy5WAkac%5B1-25-false%5D https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/lh-xy5W...

yuvadam 12y ago

Success! Twitter @support just got back to me with news that the rate limits have been increased! HN, you are awesome!

deleted 12y ago
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vegancap 12y ago
Keep up the fantastic work! Glad to hear Twitter were helpful.
elwell 12y ago
See, HNers, procrastination habits can be put to good use!
HannibalLecter 12y ago
Let's hope this saves lives.

joshfraser 12y ago

Here's a link to the Google Translated feed for @rotternews. (I used the mobile version due to formatting issues w/ the standard version) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=iw&tl=en&u=https://mobile.twitter.com/rotternews&usg=ALkJrhihAUyj_ahsD6rMj4qEOBGq30-7eQ https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

pron 12y ago
If anyone reads it, please don't mistake it for a mainstream Israeli news organization. Rotter News is a fringe right wing news website.
- davidkatz 12y ago
  It is. It also happens to be very good at reporting live rocket hits fast, which makes it a valuable resource regardless of their politics (which I don't agree with).
bilal2206 12y ago
This does not look like an emergency alert twitter feed, but more a news feed website about Israël.

korzun 12y ago

No links to your service. Running 'emergency feed' that has thousands of users depending on it with API limits without factoring in rate limiting ahead of time. Not to mention that Israel has active defense systems that alert your general area via sirens when missiles are coming. Why is this on front page?

serf 12y ago
because it's not very common that this community can potentially pitch in to save lives on an immediate basis, and this happens to be one of those occasions. those relying on the service should not be penalized by the software development practices of the person who wrote it with the best of intentions, and the opportunity existed for that to be avoided via community outreach (and it worked).
- korzun 12y ago
  Why would anybody in Israel rely on such 'service' when they have fully automated missile detection system that sounds alarms within the region of possible impact. Not to mention that twitter feed that gets it's news from another web site is a giant waste of time if you are trying to avoid rockets. It seems to me you drank the kool-aid, without any fact checking. If you want to do the 'lives' angle, if my life was at risk I would rely on billion dollar missile defense system. Not a delayed Twitter feed.
  - Blahah 12y ago
    If my life was at risk I'd probably not restrict myself to one source of information about possible sources of impending death.
  - myrdev 12y ago
    Given some of the posts elsewhere in the thread, that automated warning system isn't foolproof, so more info is better.
  - judah 12y ago
    Alarm sounding isn't totally reliable. One rocket hit a northern city, Hadera, 60 miles outside of Gaza today. No alarm that instance, I'm told.

msantos 12y ago

This is probably relevant: https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/486203341622370304 https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/486203341622370304 "Peter Lerner Israel Defense Forces Spokesman for International Media & Commander of the IDF Social Media activities.." Download code red app to see what's happening in Israel & where rockets are landing https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/red-alert-israel/id873642097?ls=1&mt=8

reubeningber 12y ago

Keep up the good work!!!

ar7hur 12y ago

To put things in context, Israel killed at least 24 people in Gaza today [1], including children. Did they have access to Twitter, let alone any telecommunication mean, let alone food and water? Sorry, but I really don't see how your twitter account being rate-limited or whatever has the slightest importance in this tragedy. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...

Forgotmypw12 12y ago
To put things in context, after receiving a warning call from the IDF that their building was going to be bombed, the head of the household ushered the children onto the roof as human shields. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  Shameful that you're being downvoted. FTA: > Official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that six were killed. Those killed were forming a "human shield" on the roof of a home belonging to members of Hamas' militant wing, Palestinian sources said. Two were children, WAFA and Palestinian medical sources said.
  - Grue3 12y ago
    Ah, same tactic Putin's bandits are using in Ukraine. Absolutely despicable.
hyperliner 12y ago
He is just trying to do whatever he can on the side of the conflict he can help out. It's a war, and collateral damage is, unfortunately, inevitable.

kungfooguru 12y ago

I think you mean, "Many casualties on the Palestinian side." Has ANYONE been killed in Israel? While Gaza is bombarded and dozens are dead, including children. Don't try to equate the oppressor with the oppressed.

gamegoblin 12y ago
Casualty != killed That being said, I suspect you are correct about a disparity in numbers on one side.
judah 12y ago
Nor is the oppressor the side with fewer casualties. Germany lost far more soldiers and civilians in the Second World War, yet that racist regime were clealy the oppressors, whose end came only by force. So it is with Hamas.
- rlucas 12y ago
  Check your historical figures. There's no possible definition X of the major Allies (hint: USSR) for which you can support your claim that "Germany lost far more soldiers [or] civilians" than X. You're smoking crack by like an order of magnitude.
- justin66 12y ago
  > Germany lost far more soldiers and civilians in the Second World War Not more than the Russians...
- stronglikedan 12y ago
  You spelled "Israel" wrong.
- lostlogin 12y ago
  It's annoying when people we don't like win elections isn't it? EDIT: Which countries weren't racist in the second world war? All the allied countries I know anything about certainly were.

judk 12y ago

Problem has been solved, mods please backpage the rageful Israel-vs-Palestine debate.

EGreg 12y ago
what does backpaging mean?

raphaelrk 12y ago

This thread brings out a lot of partisanship. yuvadm can't warn others of incoming rocket attacks without being criticized for it? Are people upset that he could potentially be reducing casualties? Ridiculous. Spew hate elsewhere.