Slashdot Mirror

A number of Slashdot users have shared a leaked Google video from Breitbart, revealing the candid reactions of company executives to Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016. The Guardian summarizes: In an hour-long conversation, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, chief executive Sundar Pichai, and executives Kent Walker, Ruth Porat and Eileen Noughton offered their reflections on the election, sought to reassure employees about issues such as immigration status and benefits for same-sex partners, and answered questions on topics ranging from filter bubbles and political polarization to encryption and net neutrality. The executives' reactions ranged from the emotional to the philosophical to the purely pragmatic. Porat appeared near tears in discussing her open support for Hillary Clinton and her father, who was a refugee. Walker discussed global political trends toward nationalism, populism and xenophobia. Pichai noted that the company was already "thoughtfully engaging" with Trump's transition team. While Breitbart argues the video shows evidence of Google's inherent bias against Republicans, Google says the executives are simply sharing their "personal views" and that it has no political bias. It does beg the question, should politics be discussed in the workplace? Longtime Slashdot reader emil writes in response to the video: [...] Disregarding the completely inappropriate expression of partisan views in the workplace, the video claims that "history is our side." These executives appear to have forgotten the incredible tumult in the distant past of the U.S. The last election was not an electoral tie that was thrown into the house of representatives (as was the election of 1800). The last election did not open a civil war as happened in 1861 when Lincoln took office. The last election did not open war with Great Britain, and will likely not precipitate a new set of proposed constitutional amendments to curb presidential power as did either of James Madison's terms in office (War of 1812, Hartford Convention). There may be a time for tears, and a time for hugs, but that time cannot be in the workplace. Most Fortune 500 employees took the news of the latest president elect with quiet perseverance in their professional settings regardless of their leanings, and it is time for Google to encourage the same. "At a regularly scheduled all-hands meeting, some Google employees and executives expressed their own personal views in the aftermath of a long and divisive election season," Google said in a statement. "For over 20 years, everyone at Google has been able to freely express their opinions at these meetings. Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products. To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint."

New submitter cornholed writes: In an update to previous posts on Slashdot, prominent Drupal and PHP Developer Larry Garfield is still defending his reputation against allegations by Drupal leadership against sexual misconduct. As previously reported by a variety of news organizations, Larry was exiled from the Drupal project for adherence to the Gor sci-fi lifestyle.

In the latest round of allegations, Garfield was reportedly asked to resign because an autistic "woman who attended Drupal community events ... was allowed to contribute by him". While some have accused Dries Buytart and the Drupal Association of "Autism Shaming", the leader of the Drupal project claims "this person could be vulnerable and may have been subject to exploitation", hence raising the risk of legal damage to the Drupal project. Larry refutes these allegations, saying these claims are post-hoc and has shared police reports purporting his innocence.

There is still much debate in the Drupal community around why Larry was ejected from his leadership positions. While there's much speculation over Larry's ouster, there is one thing for certain: become a leader in the OSS community and a dossier on your public statements just might be made about you.

Breitbart.com published an article last week that erroneously claims global warming is coming to an end, claiming "global land temperatures have plummeted by 1 degree Celsius since the middle of the year -- the biggest and steepest fall on record." The Weather Channel finds this report especially upsetting as it's not only inaccurate but it features a video from weather.com at the top of the article. The Weather Channel reports: Breitbart had the legal right to use this clip as part of a content-sharing agreement with another company, but there should be no assumption that The Weather Company endorses the article associated with it. The Breitbart article -- a prime example of cherry picking, or pulling a single item out of context to build a misleading case -- includes this statement: "The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare." In fact, thousands of researchers and scientific societies are in agreement that greenhouse gases produced by human activity are warming the planet's climate and will keep doing so. Along with its presence on the high-profile Breitbart site, the article drew even more attention after a link to it was retweeted by the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The Breitbart article heavily references a piece that first appeared on U.K. Daily Mail's site. The Weather Channel went on to refute the Breitbart article's hypothesis: This number comes from one satellite-based estimate of temperatures above land areas in the lower atmosphere. Data from the other two groups that regularly publish satellite-based temperature estimates show smaller drops, more typical of the decline one would expect after a strong El Nino event. Temperatures over land give an incomplete picture of global-scale temperature. Most of the planet -- about 70 percent -- is covered by water, and the land surface warms and cools more quickly than the ocean. Land-plus-ocean data from the other two satellite groups, released after the Breitbart article, show that Earth's lower atmosphere actually set a record high in November 2016.

geek writes: According to Caroline May from Breitbart News, "The tech industry is seeking to bolster its argument for more white-collar foreign tech workers with the insulting claim that the education system is insufficiently preparing Americans for tech fields, according to pro-American worker attorneys with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). [In an op-ed published at The Daily Caller, IRLI attorneys John Miano and Ian Smith take the tech industry to task for its strategy to promote the H-1B visa program -- alleging a labor shortage of apt American tech workers while importing thousands of foreign workers on H1-B visas from countries with lower educational results than the U.S.]" John Miano and Ian Smith write via The Daily Caller: "But if the H-1B program really is meant to correct the failings of our education system, as BigTech's new messaging-push implies, why is it importing so many people from India? According to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global standardized math and science assessment sponsored by the OECD, India scored almost dead last among the 74 countries tested. The results were apparently so embarrassing, the country pulled out of the program all together. Not surprisingly then, there isn't a single Indian university that appears within the top 250 spots of the World University Rankings Survey. And unlike American bachelor's degrees, obtaining a bachelor's in India takes only three years of study."

An anonymous reader writes: You may remember way back in April there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the nominees for the Hugo Awards being "too conservative" based on a voting campaign organized by a group of science fiction fans who wanted to promote hard science fiction over more recent nominees. This was spun as conservatives "ruining" a "progressive" award. The question was left: would the final voters of the Hugo awards accept these nominees, or just take their ball home and refuse to give out anyway awards at all? The votes are in and we know the answer now: they'd rather just not give out any awards. (Wired has a slightly different slant on the process as well as the outcome of this year's awards.)

schwit1 writes: According to crime statistics from the San Francisco Police Department there were only two drunken driving arrests last New Year's Eve in San Francisco, the lowest since 2009. This news comes on the heels of a new study revealing that the introduction of UberX reduces drunk driving deaths across California. Temple University's Brad Greenwood and Sunil Wattal published a paper that shows cheap taxi-like options make it easier for people to make the safer decision to call for a ride rather than driving home themselves.

MarkWhittington writes: The advent of commercially available self-driving cars is about five years away, but already some are thinking about how they will disrupt the economy and how society operates in general. One industry likely to suffer is that of auto insurance. Since the vast majority of auto accidents are caused by human error, having more autonomous vehicles on the road will almost assuredly result in fewer overall accidents. Further, once we've transitioned to a society that mostly gets around using self-driving vehicles, most accidents will be the result of hardware and software malfunctions. Insurance for self-driving cars would more resemble product liability coverage than the sort of auto insurance we have today. Indeed, the technology will also likely impact diverse industries such as auto mechanics, taxi services, and health care, as well as policing.

An anonymous reader writes: CNET reports that Kim Dotcom views Hillary Clinton as "an enemy of online freedom." Hilary's candidacy came up when Kim was asked about a tweet he made in which he called himself "Hillary's worse nightmare in 2016." He says now that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange would probably be a bigger headache for Clinton. "I'm aware of some of the things that are going to be roadblocks for her," he added. Dotcom said he hoped to expand the influence of the Internet Party and provide some transparency. Brietbart adds that a conflict between Assange and Clinton may have personal motivations, but it also seems inevitable. Hillary is obsessive about maintaining control of information. She created a personal server in her home to handle her emails as Secretary of State and then deleted all the contents after self-selecting the emails she believed were work-related. Assange is famous for parceling out secret information."

An anonymous reader writes Last year, the Hugo Awards went to mostly minorities and women. In response, a fan group decided to fight back against what they saw as a liberal attack on their medium. It appears that they have succeeded, as the 2015 nominees are predominantly chosen by a group called "Sad Puppies. Now a counter-counter group is trying to ensure that no one wins any Hugo awards in any category except Best Novel.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Chris Mooney writes at Mother Jones that a new study, from the Yale and George Mason University research teams on climate change communication, shows a 7-percentage-point increase in the proportion of Americans who say they do not believe that global warming is happening. And that's just since the spring of 2013. The number of deniers is now 23 percent; back at the start of last year, it was 16 percent (PDF). The obvious question is, what happened over the last year to produce more climate denial? The answer may lie in the so-called global warming "pause"—the misleading idea that global warming has slowed down or stopped over the the past 15 years or so. This claim was used by climate skeptics, to great effect, in their quest to undermine the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report in September 2013—precisely during the time period that is in question in the latest study. "The notion of a global warming "pause" is, at best, the result of statistical cherry-picking," writes Mooney. " It relies on starting with a very hot year (1998) and then examining a relatively short time period (say, 15 years), to suggest that global warming has slowed down or stopped during this particular stretch of time." Put these numbers back into a broader context and the overall warming trend remains clear. "If you shift just 2 years earlier, so use 1996-2010 instead of 1998-2012, the trend is 0.14 C per decade, so slightly greater than the long-term trend," explains Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA who was heavily involved in producing the IPCC report. This is why climate scientists generally don't seize on 15 year periods and make a big thing about them. "Journalists take heed: Your coverage has consequences. All those media outlets who trumpeted the global warming "pause" may now be partly responsible for a documented decrease in Americans' scientific understanding.""

schwit1 writes "Illinois passed a new state law that set back the efforts of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), making the use of drones to interfere with hunters and fishermen prohibited. The law was created in response to PETA's plan to employ drones called "air angels" to monitor outdoors enthusiasts engaged in hunting and fishing nationwide."

cheesecake23 writes "Many talking heads have attributed Obama's success to an unmatched 'ground game.' Now, inside reports from campaign volunteers suggest that Project Orca, a Republican, tech-based voter monitoring effort with 37,000 volunteers in swing states, turned out to be an epic failure due to dismal IT. Problems ranged from state-wide incorrect PINs, to misleading and delayed information packets delivered to volunteers, to a server outage and missing redirection of secure URLs."

pdabbadabba writes "The jury is in in the epic patent dispute between Apple and Samsung and Apple appears to be coming out on top. The court is still going through the 700+ items on the verdict form, but things seem to be going Apple's way so far. In the case of Apple's various UI patents, the jury is consistently ruling that Samsung not only violated Apple's patent, but did so willfully." Reader bob zee also points to the AP's story, as carried by Breitbart.com, and Charliemopps adds Reuters' take. Reader Samalie contributes a link to a live blog of the (at this writing) ongoing recitation of the verdict. Whether you like it or not, even this verdict won't be the last word.

bonch writes "Pilots of United and Continental will ditch flight manuals and charts in favor of 11,000 iPads containing the same data in app form. Replacing 38 pounds of paper materials, the iPads will run an app called Mobile FliteDeck from Jeppesen, a provider of software navigation tools. Alaska Airlines adopted iPads back in May. United estimates a savings of 326,000 gallons of fuel a year due to the lighter load."

cultiv8 writes "A US judge Friday ordered Twitter to hand over the data of three users in contact with the activist site WikiLeaks. 'US Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan rejected arguments raised by the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a host of private attorneys representing the Twitter account holders, who had asserted that their privacy was protected by federal law, the First Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment. Buchanan rejected each of the arguments in quick succession, saying that there was no First Amendment issue because activists "have already made their Twitter posts and associations publicly available." The account holders have "no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in their IP addresses," she said, and federal privacy law did not apply because prosecutors were not seeking contents of the communications.'"

Can you think of a better way to spend Valentine's Day than looking at a bunch of animals in flagrante delicto with the special person in your life? The Natural History Museum in London is hoping you can't. The museum is hosting an exhibit entitled, "Sexual Nature" which "explores the diverse ways in which animals have evolved to procreate, such as a snail's love darts, the detachable penis of the paper nautilus, or the outsized testes of the promiscuous chimp." Curator Tate Greenhalgh says, "This exhibition is about the relationship between sex and evolution and the bizarre, surprising adaptations that animals have evolved to procreate as much as possible. We ask people to be open-minded when looking at potentially surprising, maybe shocking things that animals do that would be outlawed in human society."

cold fjord writes "Julian Assange has signed a major book deal for his autobiography worth more than one million pounds (1.2 million euros, 1.5 million dollars). Assange told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of sexual assault made by two women in Sweden. 'I don't want to write this book, but I have to,' he said. 'I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.' The Australian said he would receive 800,000 dollars (600,000 euros) from Alfred A. Knopf, his American publisher, and a British deal with Canongate is worth 325,000 pounds (380,000 euros, 500,000 dollars). Money from other markets and serialisation is expected to raise the total to 1.1 million pounds, he said. Assange is currently out on £240,000 bail under what his lawyer refers to as not so much 'house arrest' as 'manor arrest', fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning. The Telegraph adds, 'Mr Assange said he regarded himself as a victim of Left-wing radicalism. Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,' he said. 'I fell into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism.' .... A full extradition hearing is due in London on February 7th."

Giuseppe Di Maria, an An Italian hospital director, is in a bit of hot water over a memo he sent suggesting that doctors and nurses should not snort cocaine while on duty. From the article: "Social services chiefs have opened an internal inquiry into the affair and also referred it to the local prosecutor's office. Director of social affairs Guido Scoditti said he had no choice but to pass the matter on to the authorities. 'The director of the hospital has certainly made an error, he should not have sent this memo, he should have informed me directly. The alleged consumption of cocaine in a hospital environment should certainly not be dealt with in this way,' he said."

After being on display in a museum in China, the world's crappiest statue has been sold for $45,000. A former Swiss ambassador bought the panda dung replica of the Venus de Milo for his art collection. From the article: "Children from the southwestern province of Sichuan, the home of China's beloved giant panda, made the unusual statue with the help of famous sculptor Zhu Cheng, popular web portal sina.com reported."

Darryl Alexander of Southfield, Mi. claims that a lid from an exploding jar of Del Monte fruit knocked him unconscious. Since this is an unacceptable way to get one of your 2-4 recommended daily servings, he decided to sue Del Monte and Kroger where he bought the explosive jar. Both companies deny any responsibility but have offered the sore jawed Alexander $150k to settle the suit. "It happened so fast. I just had no time to react. ... I staggered, lost consciousness and fell to the floor. I eventually screamed for my wife," he said.

In an attempt to promote good employee health, a Lithuanian transport company is paying thin drivers better salaries than their overweight co-workers. Over 100 drivers were weighed to determine their BMI. "We just wanted to promote a health lifestyle," said Vilius Lauzikas, director of Busturas, the transport company in question. The local union and donut loving drivers aren't fans of the new policy. "We cannot call it nothing other than a mockery. If they (the company) do not reconsider we will appeal to the courts," a union representative said.

Norwegian radio journalist Pia Beathe Pedersen quit on the air complaining that her bosses were making her read news on a day when "nothing important has happened." Pedersen claimed that broadcaster NRK put too much pressure on the staff and that she "wanted to be able to eat properly again and be able to breathe," during her nearly two-minute on-air resignation.

If Nevada gubernatorial candidate Eugene "Gino" DiSimone gets his way, $25 will buy you the right to drive up to 90mph for a day. DiSimone estimates his "free limit plan" will raise $1 billion a year for Nevada. From the article: "First, vehicles would have to pass a safety inspection. Then vehicle information would be loaded into a database, and motorists would purchase a transponder. After setting up an account, anyone in a hurry could dial in, and for $25 charged to a credit card, be free to speed for 24 hours."

twoallbeefpatties writes "Wired reports that a 61-year-old reservist in Afghanistan was fired from his job as a staff officer after writing a sardonic op-ed criticizing the daily briefings provided by his taskforce, portraying them as little more than a neverending stream of redundant PowerPoint slideshows. This came after attempts to reform the process by giving his superiors a presentation that, of course, included five PowerPoint slides." Maybe he should have presented it as an art project instead of a complaint.

Two Canadian marijuana growers were using at least 14 wild black bears to guard their crops. The pair had lured the bears onto their property with dog food in an attempt to deter thieves. Fortunately for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pot bears turn out to be pretty chill. "They were tame, they just sat around watching... at one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off," said RCMP Sergeant Fred Mansveld.

Mr Pink Eyes writes "President Obama has made his choice to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court that was left by the retirement of Justice Stevens. According to this article that choice will be Elena Kagan."

bonch writes "Agencies under the Obama administration cite security provisions to withhold information more often than they did under the Bush administration. For example, the 'deliberative process' exemption of the Freedom of Information Act was used 70,779 times in 2009, up from the 47,395 of 2008. Amusingly, the Associated Press has been waiting three months for the government to deliver records on its own Open Government Directive."

A group of Colombian culinary students have come up with a dish that combines the two things they like best, prescription drugs and dessert. Their creation mixes a slightly sweet passion fruit preparation with some Viagra for texture. "We got the idea four months ago when we were dealing with a nutrition project for older people. It occurred to us that we could use passion fruit, with all its connotations.. and Viagra, and we came up with this dessert," aspiring chef Juan Sebastian Gomez said at an international gastronomy fair.

An anonymous reader writes "A document, apparently a 'confidential House ethics committee report,' was recently leaked through file-sharing software to the Washington Post. According to the article, 'The committee's review of investigations became available on file-sharing networks because of a junior staff member's use of the software while working from home.' Of course, P2P software is entirely at fault for this incident. If you begin seeing more interest in DRM from Congress, you now know why." Reader GranTuring points out that the RIAA took the opportunity to make a ridiculous statement of their own. They said, "the disclosure was evidence of a need for controls on peer-to-peer software to block the improper or illegal exchange of music."

Sooner Boomer writes "Nigerian police, in what is named Operation 'Eagle Claw,' have shut down 800 scam web sites and arrested members of 18 syndicates behind the fraudulent scam sites. Reports on Breitbart.com and Pointblank give details on the busts. The investigation was done in cooperation with Microsoft to help develop smart technology software capable of detecting fraudulent emails. From Breitbart: 'When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed "Eagle Claw," should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.'"

cheros was one of several readers to note that today, Oct 5, in 1969 was the very first airing of Monty Python. Although not every sketch has aged particularly well, you'd be hard pressed to find a more influential and funny show. Heck, look at the Icon we use here to indicate humorous stories! Who among us can't claim to have viewed the Holy Grail at least somewhere in the double digits.

Xytex International, a sperm bank, understands that the recession is hitting their customers in the pocket area, so they have started to offer stimulus packages. The packages seem to be purchaser oriented. Clients who want to start a family but are a little short on cash can now buy a vial of sperm at a $200 discount. Donors aren't being offered anything special like a room with chairs made from .50 cal cartridges, slippers that look like bear feet, or a TV with monster truck racing on continuous loop. "We're all feeling the effects of the economy and, especially for families seeking reproductive options, every dollar counts," said Xytex spokeswoman Danielle Moores.

Proving that there is no limit to how stupid the stoner mind can be, a 20-year-old man is facing animal cruelty and possession of marijuana charges for stuffing his cat into a homemade bong. Authorities, responding to a domestic disturbance call at the residence, caught him smoking marijuana from a contraption that had his cat stuffed inside its 12-inch by 6-inch base. The man told Lancaster County, Nebraska sheriff's deputies the 6-month-old female named Shadow had been hyper and that he was trying to calm her down. Officials say they will test the cat for lung damage and are amazed at the number of cheeseburgers she can eat.

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the US has been in a recession since December 2007. The NBER is a private, nonprofit research organization of academic economists who determine business cycles. The stock market took a dip on the news that reached double-digit percentages for some tech stocks.

No, not that kind of sex party, a political party. The Australian Sex Party will be launched in Melbourne on Thursday as an alternative to moral campaigners and prudish politicians. Fiona Patten, who is head of the national adult retail and entertainment lobby group the Eros Association, said the trigger had been the government's decision to place a mandatory filter on the Internet. "This filter actually blacklists any adult site so it means that material which is absolutely legal for an adult to buy in a newsagency in Australia, they will be prohibited from viewing it online," Patten said. I'm not sure how effective they will be, but I'm sure they'll have the best conventions ever.

Mike writes "A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter as a potential terrorist tool. A chapter titled 'Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter' notes that Twitter members reported the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets and activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements. 'Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives,' the report said. The report goes on to say, 'Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool.' Just wait until the Army finds out about chat rooms and email!"

Scientists at MIT have moved closer to being able to create an artificial nose after finding a way to mass-produce smell receptors. The MIT RealNose project seeks to recreate the most complex and least-understood of the five senses: smell. The team plans to work with researchers around the world to develop a portable microfluidic device that can identify various smells, including diseases with unique odors, such as diabetes and certain cancers.

Now.Imperfect writes "In its last day of session, the Supreme Court has definitively clarified the meaning of the Second Amendment. The confusion is whether the Second Amendment allows merely for the existence of a state militia, or the private ownership of guns. This ruling is in response to a case regarding the 32-year-old Washington DC ban on guns." This is one of the most-watched Supreme Court cases in a long time, and Wikipedia's page on the case gives a good overview; the actual text of the decision (PDF) runs to 157 pages, but the holding is summarized in the first three. There are certainly other aspects of the Second Amendment left unaddressed, however, so you can't go straight to the store for a recently made automatic rifle.

tbischel tips us to news that the MagLev train project which would run from Las Vegas to Disneyland has received approval for $45 million in funding. The project has been in the planning stages for quite some time, and it was delayed further by a drafting error in a 2005 highway bill. "Derided by critics as pie in the sky, the train would use magnetic levitation technology to carry passengers from Disneyland to Las Vegas in well under two hours, traveling at speeds of up to 300 mph. It would be the first MagLev system in the U.S. The money is the largest cash infusion in the project's nearly 20-year history. It will pay for environmental studies for the first leg of the project."

longacre writes "The Associated Press is reporting an indictment has been handed down in the sad case of Megan Meier, the girl who committed suicide after receiving upsetting MySpace messages from someone she perceived to be her boyfriend. It was later determined the boy, Josh Evans, was a fictitious identity created by a neighbor of Meier's family. Lori Drew, of a St. Louis suburb, has been charged with 'one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.' Interestingly, despite the alleged crime having occurred strictly in Missouri, the case was investigated by the FBI's St. Louis and Los Angeles field offices, and the trial will be held in Los Angeles, home of MySpace's servers. Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."

You asked questions about Skewz.com on April 2nd and April 3rd. Here are your answers. This media bias stuff is tricky to deal with. Both Skewz and Microsoft's Blewz are trying, anyway. Skewz people say they want to jump into the conversation attached to this post, so if you have any follow-up questions please feel free to ask them. 1) Why is everything about "bias"? (Score:5, Insightful)
by MillionthMonkey

Shouldn't just "being full of [bleep]" count for anything? Why not just rate stories on their frequencies of lies, distortions, unsupported assertions, and factual inaccuracies?

That's what gives the impression of "bias" to a reader in the first place.

Vipul Vyas:

First of all, we've enjoyed all the great feedback from the Slashdot community. You can't get a more intellectual and insightful set of observations from any other group. With regard to rating bias on more granular terms, I'll answer the question with two points:

First, it's the combination of various factors that leads people to perceive bias as you have said. All we've really done is distill those many factors down to an overall political bias - either liberal or conservative. People perceive an article to be biased one direction or the other because of a variety of factors which include: biased word selection, assumptions not supported by data, poor sourcing, open demonization, inaccuracy, omission of facts, and guilt by association as a few examples. All of these factors in some combination create the perception of either liberal or conservative bias because folks on one side perceive their side is not being fairly represented by virtue of these factors being present. So the overall bias is a distillation of all these factors.

Second, all of the above being said; we are planning functionality to support this more granular reasoning for identifying bias. This will likely be used by power users that really want to dig into the reasons for bias. We believe this will be interesting because it will enable us to be able to track news sources in terms of both bias and the reasons for bias such as inaccuracies. This should add a new dimension of insight.

2) Incentivising Registration? (Score:4, Interesting)
by eldavojohn (898314)

What do you offer to entice users to register and rank stories for you? It seems that the benefits just come from the people that do all the work, is your only incentive that the person feels good for helping you out? Do you rank your users? Is there a reward system even if it's only number of stories ranked?

The article said you are hoping to raise your current set of 600 users to something more like 10,000--what are you doing to accomplish that?

Vipul Vyas:

Great question. I believe people really enjoy the Skewz forum in which they can blow the whistle on pieces purporting to be objective but are not and also push forward pieces that they advocate despite their bias. When we first started the site we were simply transferring our own daily behavior of sending around emails with articles and our reactions to them. Just being able to find a community to exchange ideas and interact with is a huge draw for people...sort of like Slashdot but for politics. Many people can get angry with what they read in the paper, but their only recourse is to send a letter to the editor and hope that it gets read or the remote possibility that it gets printed. With Skewz they can call out such issues instantly and get an immediate reaction from a community of people from both sides of the political landscape. The feedback loop is immediate.

To answer your question more direction, right now Skewz does have a user ranking system. Users are ranked in terms of their experience on the site (number of articles submitted or skewed, comments made, etc.). Users are ranked from rookie Congressmen all the way up to incumbent Senators to keep with the political theme. We also provide individual statistics with regard to user activity under the user's Skewz Me! profile. These all provide incentive from a pure personal accomplishment perspective.

A curious thing we've observed is that people both 1. reveal bias in the 'main stream or corporate media,' and 2. submit articles that they know are biased from say the blogosphere that support their position. So one of the biggest emerging reasons that people are active is to promote their perspective in an environment where they feel they might just reach the other side. I believe people honestly feel that they can reach the "other side" on our site simply by virtue of the format.

With regard to getting to 10,000 users, we're relying on the basics:
1) Great reviews from the Slashdot community (that's you guys),
2) Strong content from a politically involved community and an intuitive mechanism to attract both opinion readers and trend setters,
3) Strong ties with the blogosphere to create a mutually rewarding Skew mechanism through our widget program which is customized for political blogs in ways that more generic widgets for sites such as Digg are not, and
4) Good motivation or our current users to invite their friends - which we're seeing a lot of.

We are pleased with the results so far as we have a healthy number of people enjoying Skewz.

3) Missing sliders (Score:4, Insightful)
by Tsar (536185)

From your site's What is Skewz? [skewz.com] section:

"Skewz was started by a group of 4 guys with diverse political views who engaged in frequent political sparring. We tired of the coarseness of the public political dialog and the tendency for both sides to talk past each other. The goal was not to make peace between liberals and conservatives. Instead, we wanted to encourage liberal-conservative dialogue by improving on the intelligence and thoughtfulness of the discussions. We hoped that doing so would take focus from the cosmetic appeal of parties and personalities that generate allegiances and place it instead on wit and wisdom of intelligent debate."

It seems that your site's focus is currently on cultural/political bias rather than the "wit and wisdom of intelligent debate." If your project is to be true to its goals, shouldn't there be evaluation sliders for an article's wit, insight, wisdom and informativeness? We use a simplified system for that on Slashdot and it works surprisingly well most of the time.

Vipul Vyas:

Fair point. I think if you look at the discussion we have on the site today, it's quite a bit less bombastic than what you see on partisan sites. We're seeing people come to Skewz for more sophisticated debate with people from the other side of the political spectrum. People use the backdrop of a specific story with asserted facts and that backdrop helps keep things from getting personal and also keeps the focus on the article and topic being discussed. I believe that has really helped keep the community culture very positive.

But to your point, as indicated in my response to the first question here Skewz is adding functionality to allow people to more discretely comment on the positive and negative elements of the submitted articles.

4) Skewz me? (Score:4, Informative)
by Jeffrey Baker (6191)

Skews makes no sense. Take this article as an example:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080401184532.kxjxy7xo&show_article=1

It's an AFP wire story with completely straight, factual reporting about high school graduation rates in the USA. There is no commentary from the author whatsoever. However Skewz users rate the story as "Liberal", giving it 2.5 out of 5 points on the Liberal scale. I'm having a hard time seeing the logic there. How can a purely factual report on this topic possibly be considered leftist?

Vipul Vyas:

I think your observation makes the point. What many perceive as "straight up" objective can still be perceived as biased. With the article in question and the rating, I just learned something about how some segments of our polity interpret events...and it's very different from the way I interpret them. I think that's the point of Skewz.

Ultimately we'd have to ask the members of the Skewz community as to why the article was skewed left. I believe this is the insight you get from a site like Skewz. If you look at some of the comments associated with the article you see some interesting and even surprising perspectives which I never would have thoughts of.

Folks on the left felt the article was objective to slightly leftward leaning by pointing out the serious problems faced by inner city youth. So, liberals felt that the story being covered was good coverage of objective reality with maybe some modest left bias in terms of advocacy for a traditional set of liberal positions like uplifting those in inner cities and focusing more on education.

Conservatives had a more visceral response. If you look at the comments, the perception was that the failings were implicitly pointing to George Bush's No Child Left Behind policies. Some said the article didn't associate blame with the students or parents. Others pointed to the photo associated with the article showing jubilant African American students. They felt that the picture was out of line with the point that graduation rates among minorities were extremely low.

These sharply different take-aways from a fairly straight forward articles create the most insights. Skewz lets you augment those insights by seeing who skewed the article in what way. Each person's profile provides their political orientation so you can see how liberals reacted to an article and how conservatives reacted. That makes for some interesting insights. In addition, you can leverage the split view function on Skewz to see a story about the same news event that is rated with the opposite political orientation to the one that you are currently reading. That really lets you flesh out the whole picture in terms of the world of opinion.

5) Complaints? (Score:2, Interesting)
by Notquitecajun (1073646)

Have you ever gotten complaints from actual journalists about how their stories are rated? I think one thing that we rarely - if ever - hear is how actual journalists rate the news. I'm not talking pundits, either, I'm talking about those who are supposed to report on the who-what-when-where-how of the news.

Vipul Vyas:

We haven't so far but we hope to become more influential and at that point we'll matter to journalists. Unfortunately, some journalists are not too worried about what their readership thinks. That's where the Slashdot community can help by posting and skewing articles to keep the media honest. Our blog widget program will enable political bloggers to let their readers rate their articles and post them on Skewz. Now, bloggers by their nature are biased advocates of certain positions. That being said, there is value in understanding the information these blogs present relative to the traditional media. The closer the traditional media gets to certain segments of the blogosphere, the less likely they are representing an objective perspective. The blogs, on the other hand, carry their liberal and conservative affiliations as a badge of honor.

6) Hmm, the Microsoft attempt looks more sophisticated (Score:3, Insightful)
by melted (227442)

Hmm, the Microsoft attempt looks more sophisticated: http://research.microsoft.com/~chrisko/papers/ICWSM_paper.pdf, albeit totally orthogonal to what skewz.com does.

Are you guys using machine learning at all? If not, how do you protect yourselves against user bias (e.g. the situation where liberals like your site and conservatives don't, so you get mostly liberal stories). Personally, it seems to me that Skewz is just a glorified Digg with sliders.

Vipul Vyas:

There's always the risk that one side dominates the site. That being said, there is such a perception of media bias on both sides that I believe Skewz provides a legitimate venue for that discussion to take place which will continue to draw people from both ends of the political spectrum. If we provide an even playing field, we'll be a place where either side can come to try to evangelize the other in terms of their perceptions. Skewz is an political open space.

Also, based on a recent Harris Interactive Poll Blog readership is almost evenly distributed with 22 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats regularly reading blogs. Independents are the ones slightly more likely to read these, as just over one-quarter (26%) say they regularly read political blogs.

Interestingly, most all of the founders of Skewz come have speech recognition and statistical language modeling background. We leverage language modeling in our split view function which matches stories on the right with their corresponding foils on the left to provide a fuller perspective. So from that perspective we do use some linguistic modeling at a basic level.

I applaud what Microsoft is doing with Blews. However, I think Skewz is a pretty different site in that it's user driven, and we're interested in understanding what people think. If you're really into the political blog world you realize that different blogs have different degrees of alignment with the left or right and this actually evolves. In fact, some folks completely swap sides over time. In the end politics is about people and their perceptions. We think its valuable to get it directly from the source to best understand how these trends evolve. For example, Andrew Sullivan has evolved from being a fairly right wing stalwart to being an Obama supporter. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs moved in the other direction after 9/11. These movements are best described by asking the polity itself.

7) Cultural polarization as a web service (Score:2)
by Tsar (536185)

What filters will be available in the future? Will users be able to limit the stories they see to those rated, say, (+4,Reactionary) or above? That would allow your portal to emulate the Drudge Report, the Daily Kos or the John Birch Society homepage at the user's whim, removing the risk of accidental exposure to differing viewpoints.

Vipul Vyas:

I'm glad you asked this question. Skewz actually has this functionality today. If you are a registered user you'll see a spectrum under both the liberal and conservative sides. You can slide the hands there to bracket the stories to see more or less extremes of each side. In this way, you can create your own view or synthetic version of the Drudge Report or Daily Kos. But keep in mind, by virtue of the format you are always at risk at being exposed to the other side...which is a risk that has many rewards.

8) Where is your value add, without a better spectrum... (Score:2)
by PotatoHead (12771)

Of political alignment?

IMHO, most media today leans corporate left and corporate right. This is missed because the one dimensional model is not up to the task of actually helping us quantify and deal with bias.

So, why bother with a service like yours, if it is lacking in this way?

Vipul Vyas:

Good question. When Skewz first started, I used to just visit a couple of sites that were more or less aligned with my existing political beliefs. However, Skewz has exposed me to a variety of different perspectives...some of which I didn't even know existed. Even if I don't agree with some of the new perspectives I've been exposed to, I now have a better sense of how other people think and what their logic is. In some respects, I didn't realize what I myself was reading was biased because I was completely unaware of other facts or theories on the same subject that were out there. Skewz has enabled me to still get a lot of the information I was getting before while at the same time exposing me to an entirely different world of thinking in a format that's relatively easy to use.

With regard to your question on the spectrum, it works because you're not just rating the corporate media left or right which I take it you mean the traditional media. Blogs are also well represented on the site. Users can submit and add weight to what the blogs are saying. If there are subjects or angles that the traditional media are not covering then these stories can be submitted and rated. Again, people tend to reveal bias in two ways: 1. I know this is biased, but I like what it is saying or 2. this purports to be objective and it's not so I am blowing the whistle. Some people also use the site to employ a third tactic. They submit articles as being objective that deal with subject or facts that they feel the media has not covered through "bias by exclusion."

9) Truth, and the real bias we need to worry about (Score:2)
by Gat0r30y (957941)

It seems that the news media has become increasingly segmented, and indeed this provides a way for people to get only the news they want to see. But my issue stems not from Left or Right, but from a more general perspective. An increasing bulk of the news out there is increasingly aimed at the Lowest Common Denominator. I can see that there is a place for tabloids, and their stories, just like there is a place for soap operas. However, it seems that the tabloid mentality has infiltrated all facets of corporate news media. Instead of raising debate about policy, the dialog in most mainstream news outlets has become more along the lines of "OMG, Hillary is 2 points down! And she doesn't have as many myspace friends as Obama! And McCain is super hot!". I propose that what we need is not a "Left vs. Right" filter, but a "Pointless drivel I wouldn't read if it was printed on Lindsay Lohan's ass and I was doin her from behind vs. Actual News Content which I might find of Value".

I gave your site a quick look, there were 3 stories on the front page which might have entailed some sort of policy issue, or problem facing the electorate.

A) UK considering "Health Vouchers" for NHS patients.(marked conservative)
B)Study: only 1/2 of students graduate high school in US Cities (marked liberal)
C)'Silent' Famine sweeps globe (marked liberal)

Everything else was the "high school lunchroom" type of discussion, who's up, who's down, why they might be up if they are up, why they shouldn't give up and "rah rah sis boom bah for My Favorite Candidate". My question is this, how can we elevate actual issues to the discussion? How can we start a dialog based on the problems we face, and the policy which the candidates propose to fix these problems? Food shortages, Education, and Health care are real issues. The day to day of campaigning is interesting for sure, but how can we keep it from dominating the news landscape as it does now?

Vipul Vyas:

This is a great question. I believe it's human nature to do both. The "name calling level of debate" is indeed easy and appealing. But that being said, if you look at the actual debate on Skewz; the level of debate is more solution oriented than you'll see on many other more partisan sites. In fact, the three substantial articles you mention may not show up anywhere on many other news outlets. You are right in that news outlets tend to cater to the segments they are going after. With Skewz, the community decides what is most interesting so the feedback loop is more immediate. By and large, the self-selecting community has been more about deep debate on real issues versus mudslinging- even in this election season. On Skewz you can find finely parsed debate on Obama's health care plan or global warming for example.

Often the submitted article is the launching point for more detailed discussion where folks often learn a great deal about the other side. For example, liberal and conservatives (generally) seem to agree on US presence in Afghanistan...much to the surprise of many conservatives. Conversely, gun control is not as passionately pursued by liberals (at least those on our site currently) as many conservatives had assumed.

News media give their customer base what they want. With Skewz, the community decides what it wants, and so far we seem to be selecting a more sophisticated news consumer.

10) What about consensus? (Score:3, Funny)
by prxp (1023979)

What about when both parties reach a consensus and the story ranks 100% liberal and 100% conservative? Does the system explode? Is this a new sort of Quantum Computer? Enlighten me, please! (but hey, be fair and balanced, will you?)

Vipul Vyas:

We accommodate for this through the center skew which points to an objective view that everyone agrees represents reality objectively. Sadly, that doesn't happen often enough. (and by the way the quantum version of Skewz where articles can be liberal and conservative at the same time is coming up and will be part of the theory of everything...:-)

The feed brings us a New Scientist review of the repairs and new instruments that astronauts will bring to the Hubble Space Telescope next August (unless the launch is delayed). The resulting instrument will be 90 times as powerful as Hubble was designed to be when launched, and 60% more capable than it was after its flawed optics were repaired in 1993. If the astronauts pull it off — and the mission is no slam-dunk — the space telescope should be able to image galaxies back to 400 million years after the Big Bang.

penguin_dance writes "The UK is apparently rethinking its ban on human hybrid experiments. If approved by regulators, '[t]he move opens the door to experiments involving every known kind of human-animal hybrid. These could include both "cytoplasmic" embryos, which are 99.9% human, and "true hybrids" carrying both human and animal genes.' Previous calls for an outright ban on all human-animal embryos outraged scientists, according to the article, who believe that 'work on human-animal hybrid embryos will greatly speed up progress in stem cell research.' The report claims there will be a provision for regulation of the research to incorporate any 'unforeseen developments.' Let the Island of Dr. Moreau comparisons begin!"

diewlasing writes to mention that Oxford scientists have proffered a mathematical answer to the parallel universe question that is gaining some support in the scientific community. "According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by 'wave functions' representing a set of multiple 'probable' states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options. The Oxford team, led by Dr. David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes."

E++99 writes in to let us know about a development in paleo-anthropology. It seems that up until now, scientific consensus has placed the divergence of man from the ape line five to six million years ago (based on "genetic distances"). But newly discovered fossils in Ethiopia place the divergence at least twice as far back, and perhaps as long ago as 20 million years. They also largely put to rest any doubts that man and modern apes both emerged from Africa. From the article: "The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago... Beyond that... fossils of early humans from the Miocene period, 23 to five million years ago, disappear. Fossils of early apes especially during the critical period of 14 to eight million years ago were virtually non-existent — until now... [T]he new fossils, dubbed 'Chororapithecus abyssinicus' by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleo-anthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that."

teh_commodore writes to tell us that Breitbart has a look at how Citizen Journalism is shining a whole new light on China. "Recognizing the threat of China's growing online community, Chinese President Hu Jintao called in January for the Internet to be 'purified', and the government has since launched a number of online crackdowns. [...] 'One cannot truly say that the Internet in China is becoming more and more free, because at the same time as the development of citizen journalists, the government finds ways of blocking or censoring content,' Pain said."

SlashRating^© 10 slashdottit! ^tm ddelmonte writes with a link to a brietbart story on the top ten April Fools Day hoaxes, as determined by the San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes. Two great British examples: "In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of spaghetti from trees prompted a barrage of calls from people wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti at home. In 1977, British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement for the 10th anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of the two main islands, named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse."

An anonymous reader writes "An ad campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force featuring the Mooninites Ignignot and Err caused major security concerns in Boston, MA when magnetic light displays were mistaken for possible bombs. The displays included one of Ignignot flipping the bird (as hard as he could), but Gov. Deval Patrick was not amused."

solitas writes "NASA isn't just "going back to the drawing boards" to get back to the Moon, they're also going through the museums and archives so that the new engineers can rediscover/learn how it was done the first time." From the article: "Some old Apollo engineers are even being brought back on a contract basis to work with the young folks, some of whom were not even born when the Saturn V was flying lunar missions. The new manned exploration project, called Constellation, is deliberately drawing upon lessons from the past as the space agency works to meet a congressional deadline of flying the Ares rocket ... In fact, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has described the new program as 'Apollo on steroids.'"

PCM2 writes "A coalition of major recording companies sued the operators of the file-sharing program LimeWire for copyright infringement Friday, claiming the firm encourages users to trade music without permission." From thge article: " The case is the first piracy lawsuit brought against a distributor of file-sharing software since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that technology companies could be sued for copyright infringement on the grounds that they encouraged customers to steal music and movies over the Internet. In the complaint, the record companies contend LimeWire's operators are "actively facilitating, encouraging and enticing" computer users to steal music by failing to block access to copyright works and building a business model that allows them to profit directly from piracy. "