They don't. In fact they even did an experiment and admitted some people at random, irrespective of how well they did in the interviews. Those people were found to perform about as well as the legitimate interview "lottery winners" hired during the same time period.
A lot of people (anecdotally, the majority) at Google have the "impostor syndrome", and the news of the experiment did nothing whatsoever to quell the symptoms. Now they don't know if they are, in fact, not impostors, but they do know that on average they perform about as well. :-)
Could the performance of the lottery winners have been "environmental"? That is, they benefited from being surrounded by competent people (which was, in turn, guaranteed by those people having gone through the interview process) and "leveled up" due to that?
In other words, maybe as long as you let in a small number (but only a small number) of non-performers, you're fine (which is bound to happen anyway - I'm sure there is some noise in the interviews).
Yes. Getting hired by Google is only part of the deal. Actually _succeeding_ when you're already there is much more difficult. It's a high pressure environment with a lot of very smart overachievers. Because of this it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and people who don't measure up also don't feel welcome, as it were. Since performance reviews are largely derived from peer feedback, hiring mistakes tend to be self-correcting. Most of the time, though, I've seen great people leave just because they didn't like the pressure. The amount of pressure depends on the team. The higher the profile -- the more pressure (but also more rewards, greater career potential, etc). But the general bar for what's considered "good work" is pretty high, and more uniform than in any other large company I have ever worked at.
Then there's the issue that by the time you even get an on-site, you're already very much not a random candidate. Recruiters actually do look at your track record, etc. You can bullshit there, but I don't recommend it, since references will be spot checked, and they better line up.
Google interviews are largely a roll of the dice above certain level of basic engineering competence. I.e. if you don't know the basics, you will almost certainly not pass them. But if you're a more senior candidate, Google doesn't really know how to interview you, and their interview process turns into a random number generator biased heavily towards "no hire".
They are no longer amongst top choices for top people. Alphabet might be, Google isn't. That's why they are dumbing down their interviews in the past 8 years and repelling even more top people that want to change the world and not be just another cog in the machine.
They certainly still _are_ among the top choices for top people, but they're no longer the _best_ choice for most. I can't in good conscience advise anyone to join any 70K person company. "Cog in a machine" describes it pretty well. Ignore "self driving cars" and "internet balloons" and other BS: there's near zero chance you'll get to work on any of that, particularly if you don't already have a stellar track record at some company Google/Alphabet respects (of which there are very few).
Don't take his word as a word of god from heaven. Google's interview process is just as shitty as anyone else's, and shittier than some I've been through. It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall. It also wastes a ton of time both on the employer and on the candidate side. Source: interviewed ~100 people in my 6+ years at Google.
Yes, I don't think their process is magic. Google gets a good workforce because they are generous and prestigious, which means a lot of good people apply there. And Google is willing to say no to a lot of people in their search for good people. They reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine.
> Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives.
Which is how it is typically presented because it sounds much better than "reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine". It is useful to perceive both the potential value in an approach like this and the shortcomings. Google can absorb the massive expense in man hours, lost opportunity, etc. that comes with trying to craft genuinely predictive interview processes, but a lot of the companies trying to emulate them can't. Too often, interviewees don't realize a process of this sort is stacked against them, and interviewers don't appreciate the negatives of adopting a still-nascent approach that sounds more reliable simply because it is quantitative - and assuming since Google does it it must work.
Interviewing is hard. I wonder if a number of great candidates just refuse to interview with Google because it's too cumbersome? I know a couple of great folks who just dropped half way because they couldn't be bothered with Google's lack of organization and their lengthy process.
Its not like Google pays the best or still has the best workplace. It's a large company with large company politics and red tape.
I'm not sure I believe that, actually. As elaborate as the process is, there are still plenty of false positives. I'm not convinced a simpler process would have produced a materially different outcome.
It's more than they're optimizing on a very specific set of skills/experience - the ability to answer a particular type of problem (eg. from "Crack the Coding Interview") on a whiteboard in under 45 minutes.
The trouble with that is it probably makes false positives more likely to slip through because they have to interview more people to fill a position...
Which is unfortunately wrong (unsafe), as it assumes the noise is random.
That seems to be an unproven assumption, and quite likely to be a wrong assumption. For example if good people turn out to be less interested in "honing their interview skills", adding parasitic noise to the signal.
It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall.
This gets tossed around as a truism. I'm curious, does anyone have any evidence for it? Call me a skeptic, but these kinds of "everyone knows" truths are often wrong.
Google and other such companies have a vested interest in getting hiring right. They also have the wherewithal to conduct studies, collect data, and let the evidence guide their hiring practices. Google in particular has shown a willingness to completely overhaul their practices by eliminating ineffective practices (remember their reputation for "thought puzzle" type questions?).
So I'm curious if you have anything to back up the idea that they're doing it all wrong.
To quote Abraham Lincoln: "Do not trust anything you read on the internet".
I know it from my own experience and that of many others who have been through the gauntlet. Take it for what it's worth, I'm not selling you anything. I don't look impressive on the whiteboard, but I do have a rather impressive track record. Something doesn't line up. :-)
FWIW, as far as I recall there was another experiment at Google where they tried to establish correlation between interview performance and job performance, and as far as I recall, there was no meaningful correlation. This, of course, is not fully representative, because it does not include poor whiteboard performers.
Don't take this the wrong way, but the anecdotes of people who didn't make it through "the gauntlet" are quite likely to be biased. Those of people who did make it are as well.
Did I say it was "data"? The closest anyone has come to "data" on this (that I know of) is Google, in that experiment where they just hired people at random. But they decided to ignore the results and stick to the soul crushing 5 hour interviews anyway, so data did not change the relevant people's minds.
These were their conclusions:
1. The ability to hire well is random. This is referring to individuals, not the system as a whole.
2. Forget brain-teasers. Focus on behavioral questions in interviews, rather than hypotheticals
3. Consistency matters for leaders
4. Grades don’t predict anything about who is going to be a successful employee. School grades, that is.
So, stop making stuff up from behind your throwaway account.
Ouch, "making stuff up". That's harsh, my man. Thus far I've made absolutely nothing up in this thread, or indeed in any others under this account. And you're using a PR puff piece written by Google HR to discount years of personal experience that I'm sharing here. You're free to not believe me, but let's not level accusations without evidence, OK?
Is it really a truism? If anything, the general industry consensus is the opposite, that Google engineers are brilliant, the cream of the crop. Every big tech company and Google wannabe emulates their interview process. My Quora feed for whatever reason is littered with questions pertaining to how amazing working at Google is. In my experience, the people who question the effectiveness of Google style interviews seem to be in the minority.
> It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure
If this were true, Google would have crashed and burned a long time ago.
Obviously, their interview process selects for much more versatile engineers than that. Engineers who not only produce reliable and maintainable code, but who can actually come up with products that generate billions of dollars over the years.
A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates. The proof is pretty obvious: what companies pay as much as Google and are as prestigious as Google and have bad engineers?
Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it.
> A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates.
Their pay and prestige will attract even more bad candidates.
>Actually, Google pays under the average of top companies, because as a top tier company, they can afford. Most people I know who went to work for Google took a pay cut but don't have a single regret about it.
Compared to who? They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels. You might be correct that certain other companies pay more than Google (Netflix maybe?), but they're certainly above average.
> They pay more than AMZN/MS/FB/AAPL/etc. for equal level, but are stingier with levels.
Google is more generous to good performers via bonuses once you are working there, but if you have two offers in hand, you are going to find Google highly resistant to negotiating. The notion of people taking a pay cut to work at Google sounds plausible to me.
If one's goal is to maximize compensation (particularly in the short term), a Google offer is better used to get a higher paying offer at one of their competitors.
> Google is more generous to good performers via bonuses once you are working there, but if you have two offers in hand, you are going to find Google highly resistant to negotiating. The notion of people taking a pay cut to work at Google sounds plausible to me.
I don't think that's true. While google is by all accounts (including in my personal experience) unwilling to move significantly on base salary, they'll happily match pretty much any offer with stock from my experience (and the experience of others I've talked to).
What they will not do is adjust for cost of living or differences in taxation when comparing an offer in Mountain View with one in a cheaper locale such as Seattle (which is where two of the companies you listed above are headquartered).
Perhaps I dealt with a particularly nasty Google recruiter. I felt like the recruiter had misrepresented the health benefits and relocation package once I got the actual offer letter and related paperwork.
Ah, you're correct, I was specifically told "we don't take cost of living into account when deciding compensation" or similar language. (which isn't strictly true either)
That said, from what I've seen, compensation growth at Google from everything I've seen is faster than at the other companies, which means that for someone coming in at L>3, they will likely be given greater compensation at google than elsewhere.
I'm curious as to how they misrepresented things. I was actually pleasantly surprised once I got here by how extensive the benefits were, but I'm always interested in learning more, since while I actually think that 4 google interviews is a decent way to judge someone for google, I really hate their interview/negotiation process.
One thing interviews can't select for: creativity and motivation. And in tech those two criteria are the most vital, especially motivation. I can easily fill in the skills gap in someone who's motivated. I can't do anything with someone who doesn't give a shit, even if they're the second coming of Albert Einstein. So folks, please, don't apply for jobs you don't really care about. Save yourself and your prospective employer time, aggravation, and the opportunity cost.
I find it unfair that you're downvoted. I mostly agree with you.
However, "don't apply for jobs you don't really care about" is a very 50/50 advice. Right now I have zero money reserves. If I somehow got fired tomorrow, I'll be in the red even after 2 days of unemployment. So sometimes you have to make a hard choice.
That being said, it's good to be open about this after you get your act together months later and decide what to do with your current employer, during a lunch for example.
Well, don't wait to get fired then. Find a better paying job you like and go for it. It doesn't seem like you have much to lose anyway, and the best way to increase your paycheck is by moving around and not letting employers take you for granted. Just don't sell your soul for a buck in the process. This game is a marathon, and grinding it out never really works in the long term.
I fully agree, and that's exactly what I am doing -- even if an offer from another company ends up only being a leverage to force a raise in my current company (see below for clarification). However, I am taking it slow and I am patient (even though NOT being able to randomly go to the cinema or a restaurant with my girlfriend is getting on the nerves of both of us lately; money is tight and I'm very unhappy with my current compensation) because I don't want to replace one problem with the same problem in another company. So I am picky, I am clear in my requirements, I don't accept terms I know will make me hate the job, and I am perfecting my negotiating skills during this entire process.
CLARIFICATION on the leverage remark: it's my opinion that 99% of the time leveraging an offer from another company that wants to give you more money, to make your old company give you more money, is a huge mistake. Most businessmen HATE being strong-armed, or, to use a milder language, hate being shown that their employees have power over them, and this makes them hate you even if they very much need you in a business sense. They end up actively looking for a way to get rid of you, even if it costs them more money and/or stress in the long-term. I've witnessed it.
SOURCE: 4 of my stupider younger acquantainces from 7-12 years in the past. And an observation from my first job. After I "strong-armed" my first employer to double my then pretty measly salary, he went on a hunt to replace me (even though it took him around a year to really do it), but I was smart enough to detect the signs and resigned long before he had the chance. No regrets.
Russian here: Russia very definitely does use online trolling domestically (same as the US I guess). They also use paid "pro-government" rally attendees. That's very well documented, including direct video evidence on Youtube.
I very much doubt they're competent enough to pull something like this convincingly here in the US and avoid early detection and counter-intelligence response. Thus far no evidence whatsoever was presented that any of this was Russian, let alone state sponsored. That's either some truly elite level GRU work, to the standard we have not ever seen before, or there is, in fact, no "paid Russian trolls" on The_Donald. My opinion: there's no way in hell they could pull this off without getting noticed _well before_ the anointed Democratic candidate lost the election.
> They also use paid "pro-government" rally attendees.
Christ, even the Canadian government does this, and we're about as unsophisticated as it gets.
The naivete of people getting their panties in a bunch over the revelation that The Evil Russians participate in hacking and propaganda, how can you be so unaware of how the world works?
Count me in -- I bought it / am buying it. Who has an interest in making it look like Russia?
I thought the folks who were acting concerned about the young throwaway accounts were just being paranoid. Until the next sequential throwaway account showed up and piled on. What gives? Is HN influential enough to deserve astroturfing / propaganda from state intelligence services?
It's not so much about "making it look like Russia" as it is about making the current administration look illegitimate. There are literally trillions of dollars at stake, as well as very affluent lifestyles of some very influential people who have been running things for decades. They might end up being replaced by a different group of people, and they don't like that one bit. And they are fighting it tooth and nail. Just goes to show how little power is really vested in the officials we elect (yes, "we", I am a US citizen), and how much of it is wielded by the amorphous Washington DC apparatus that doesn't change no matter who you vote into office. Explicitly going after them, the way Trump promised in the final months of his campaign, is a suicide mission, if he actually decides to follow through on the threat. But I don't think he actually has the power or indeed the smarts to "drain the swamp" in any kind of meaningful way. This draining is long overdue, but there's no way to accomplish this without some world class statesmanship, and without having the intelligence community on your side, and Trump is at odds with both of those things.
And here's some Russian perspective on "draining the swamp": that's actually one thing Putin did when he came to power. Under Yeltsin, the government was basically run by oligarchs, and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. Putin and Russia's security/intelligence community that installed him laid down the ground rules, and made it clear that from there on out orders would be coming down from the Kremlin, not the other way around. One oligarch rebelled (Khodorkovsky) and was put in prison for a decade. Which, by the way, was entirely deserved. Most Russians were disappointed that other oligarchs didn't follow.
The issue with "draining the swamp" is that this creates voids that other people fill. Which they did under Putin. So even though oligarchs are pretty obedient now, there's a much stronger swamp sub-structure of Putin's pals under the covers which is darn near impossible to remove until he dies, and they're all under his control.
So armed with this perspective, I like two features of the US political system that many other Americans (native and naturalized) intensely dislike: the divided congress and the constant Mexican standoff between the executive and the legislative branch. If those guys could agree on anything, that's when we'd really be in trouble. Case in point is once again Russia, where the executive branch can request whatever laws it wants and be 100% sure they'll pass the Duma. The result is predictable: harebrained laws protecting the incumbent regime.
As a Russian myself, I can tell you with certainty that there are mistakes in that text that a Russian ESL speaker would never make, and verb tenses are a bit too good for an unskilled speaker. Due to the combination of these two factors, I bet this was written by a native English speaker who thinks he/she knows the mistakes a Russian would make. They're wrong.
Yes she said, "you can actually see Russia, from land, here in Alaska." (And not "from my house"). Why this was ripe for satire was that it was the response to "What insight into Russian actions particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of this state give you?" IMO she repeated part of the question as her answer and it didn't go anywhere near the seriousness of the questions before about Ossetia.
Indeed. Most people forget that the response was to "Why do you know about Russia's foreign actions"... 'Because I can see Russia' is effectively what was said.
It really harkens back to much of the Republicans' desire for anti-scientific thoughts, and lack of critical thought. It also explains the overly simplistic thought of "Well, the weather is nice, this climate change must be bullshit".
Don't get me wrong, I think the Democrats have significant problems of their own. For example, they're not able to properly convey scientific thought to the masses, and instead rely on shaming and insulting. That's not exactly a way to engender people to your view.
The BS one hears today (against Russia, etc) are the "WMD"s of 2017.
There's a single superpower the last 2+ decades (Russia is no USSR) and it has a long history of pushing for its "interests" all over the world, starting wars, grabbing resources, overthrowing governments, supporting all kinds of lunatics and dictators.
And covering the whole damage they do with holier than though finger pointing, made up stories, and generally BS they serve a docile and mostly ignorant on anything happening outside their home state, much less worldwide, population. Or, actually, worse than ignorant: mostly informed from mainstream tv news presenting them the "enemy du jour", but with a complete lack of context and history, and with any nuance and details jumbled up in their minds (in a "Go to Austria, see the kangaroos" fashion).
Whether its a Joe Sixpack or a college educated person, in the majority of cases they equally lack context and perspective, and have no real reason to even try to get one, since they have no skin in the game: some other poor suckers will go and fight (e.g. literally poor whites, blacks and latinos going into service) and some remote countries will pay the toll, so no big deal.
I can't say I agree with all of the foreign policy decisions made on my behalf in the last few decades. But Russia reaps what it sows. And it sows corruption much worse than ours.
Also it's remarkably unfair for you to cherry pick our foreign policy misdeeds while leaving out all of the good we've done over that same time frame.
I wish we cultivated a better interest in world news and culture here. Our natural borders play some (small) role in our isolation. But, yes, the population at large also ignores much of the global news.
> Also it's remarkably unfair for you to cherry pick our foreign policy misdeeds while leaving out all of the good we've done over that same time frame.
Considering the US government and it's MSM propaganda machine tell only one side of the story, I'd think you'd be comfortable with someone telling the other side of that story, if it's fairness you're seeking of course.
Who cares who's leaders are worse? Both countries are ruled by people without the population's best interest at heart.
Do not trust the people telling you Russia is behind all of these problems for the US. Even if it's true, it's a fraction of Russians that are guilty, and if you judge the whole population by what they've done Americans are guilty of a whole hell of a lot too.
Russia is no USSR, but Putin is ex-KGB. On one hand I agree with you that it's overdramatised to some extent, and that it's likely that a lot of the claims about Russia are made up. On the other hand, Putin seems like exactly the type who would see intelligence and manipulation as a way for Russia to punch above its weight and is likely to be engaging in it.
The problem with trying to unravel the truth about Russian hacking is that both sides have similar incentives to play up the drama: For the West to paint Russia as a threat plays straight into an agenda of making Russia seem relevant and powerful. Because of that, there's no reason for Putin to try particularly hard to squash allegations whether they're true or false.
>On the other hand, Putin seems like exactly the type who would see intelligence and manipulation as a way for Russia to punch above its weight and is likely to be engaging in it.
Sure, but at the level Russia can afford, and "puppeteering the US president" is a BS claim way above that, tailor-made for a nation spoon-fed with shows like 24 and Homeland and endless claims about how all the world "plots against it" while itself does exactly that globally (and nobody bats an eyelid).
And while Russia/Putin will use such tactics for their country's (and/or his own) immediate interests/survival (e.g. in Crimea, a place with a huge majority of ethnic Russians, or the middle east), they don't have neither the means or the history of meddling and plundering all over the world.
The claims are mostly a way to invent a present-day Bond villain, an easily identifiable target, like it has been played out tons of times in the past. Russia has too many natural resources and wants to control its periphery, something that goes against the general "interests" and plundering intentions of outside players, hence the pressure, combined with the constant post-Cold-War expansion of Nato to suffocate them.
If instead of Putin there was some friendly dolt selling Russia wholesale to foreign corporate interests (instead to national players that the country can somewhat control -- something which is labeled "cronyism"), like e.g. Yeltsin, it would be all love and hugs with EU and the US, even if they did ten times worse in freedom internally. You know, like those lovable Saudis.
While I get your wider point, I find the different types of mistakes that ESL'ers with different mother tongues make absolutely fascinating.
I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles, people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons.
When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in English - dear god, so much about my native tongue that I had no idea about, and yet made particular nationality error combinations really stand out. It's crazy fun.
Edit: and I love my eldest's progress with English. While she's basically a bilingual preschooler, she tends to speak English with polish word order: I like cars red. Her natural instinct is to also use the polish rules for nouns when choosing he/she/it. It's an absolutely fascinating process I feel privileged to observe.
Interestingly, that word order is also valid English, though it has a slightly different meaning than "I like red cars".
Example: "I like [my] soup warm".
"I like soup warm, but you can eat it cold and left over if you want."
"I like having soup warm"
"I like my cookies freshly baked"
"I like men muscular and toned"
"I like my women blonde, so you can go for the brunette"
"I like cars red" doesn't quite work as well but doesn't seem wrong. Add a little context and it seems more normal. "As a buyer of many sports cars, I like my cars red, even despite the speeding tickets I get".
Perhaps a linguist could explain how this phrasing works.
(That said, of course I advocate teaching her to speak fluently and to use that word order only when she intends its subtlety of meaning.)
Ehhhh... not often quite set in stone enough that you can rely on it, especially for spoken language. Emphasis and a whole host of other situations lean towards - but by no means demand - order in the example given.
Another angle I haven't heard is that they are just having a bit of fun for the lulz: They know their adversaries can (fabricate) attribute with or without obfuscation (cyber war signalling style). So they bring it over the top with some cold war 80s action movie dialogue. It serves no other function than to taunt and confuse and hear some American housewives on Twitter go: I dunno, sounds Russian to me!
The full effect seems to be a thread of 200+ comments talking about the language in the release, sentence-for-sentence, and many (un)witting agents pouring over the contents of the files.
Perhaps, besides the fun of imagining someone having to explain to McCain what a "double dutch rudder" is, the language serves a higher purpose of increasing virality and impact.
> It would be very weird for anyone to make assumptions about their identity based on broken english.
They could be haven trying to disguise themselves, maybe fearing a grammatical analysis or somehow exposing some fingerprint in how they construct sentences.
And as throwaway claimed, if you speak both English and Russian (I do), and have heard many others who speak both English and Russian for a many years you start to pick up patterns and understand when someone is speaking with a fake-make-it-sound-Russian style.
Due to the combination of these two factors, I bet this was written by a native English speaker who thinks he/she knows the mistakes a Russian would make.
Or it is Russian and they intentionally formulated this as cartoonesque Russian, so that everyone says "this can't possibly be Russian, it's someone who tries to put the blame on Russia".
The problem is that if this comes from a government power, it is likely that they have the resources to use some professional translators and/or linguists to make it look whatever they want it to look like.
Anything here that is not backed by other data is just pure speculation.
Quite. If this was actually designed by a state actor, they have access to professional linguists who specialise in this sort of stuff. You're not going to figure out who it is unless they want you to, and it certainly won't be obvious enough for a cursory browse to identify provenance.
Why do people keep saying it's Russian or someone faking Russian? Clearly it was written to avoid identification by text analysis or whatever it's called.
I'm also Russian, and I have to concur with this assessment after looking at the text (while noting that I do generally believe that Russian government was actively involved in cyberattacks against US, including, among other things, to affect election results last year). It does sound very much like a native or near-native English speaker trying to fake Russian accent.
Not really. The GP is implying that they are Russian with this
>since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable."
But the person who replied is saying how the grammatical obfuscation doesn't look like something that's done by a Russian but by an English speaker who is trying to sound like a Russian with bad English. Because a Russian with bad English wouldn't make those mistakes.
To my ear, this obfuscation sounds Middle Eastern, due to the frequent use of "-ing" in verbs whether it belongs there or not. I know an Iranian guy who does this a lot.
The whole point is to feed it through translation services dozens of times until the meaning remains but the actual word selection is super poor and completely unidentifiable.
It's weird to me that you're trying to push this to blame another group so quickly, especially with an 8 day old account.
Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "New York Times" as "NYT". The telltale signs are all over the text.
That's a terrible analysis, I'm not from the US and know all of the above and would abbreviate NYT. I'm not hugely into US politics but I'm not ignorant of it either. Hell the BBC, Der Spiegel and Le Monde all covered Bannon losing his NSC seat.
> the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse
that's not exactly hard for anyone that payed even a little attention during the very controversial US political season in 2016. Same with Brexit. The terminologies and crux issues have been widely debated on the social web. I would say it has actually been very difficult to escape
Right. However, things like "caucus" and "SCOTUS" are really unlikely to be written by a Russian, on any English knowledge level. We do make mistakes, but our mistakes are different. In this text, there are too few common mistakes, and too many strange things.
the parent's point though was that there's a mismatch between the level of idioms used and the broken grammar used (which is, imo, pretty obviously intentionally obfuscated; it's just… not how a non-native speaker would write it, esp russian)
I've observed the whole Brexit thing with great interest, but I don't feel well versed in the vernacular. And for someone well versed, it'd be difficult to know what the person who's not well versed wouldn't know. Which is what we're observing here.
You won't be well versed in the vernacular of any political event unless you follow the news. But that's just as true for native speakers. You seem to imply that people who learn tens of thousands of words to communicate in a foreign language would be unlikely to learn the additional vocabulary of the current events. Especially the big events. Could anyone with a British friend in Twitter never hear of the NHS bus, for example? Unlikely.
Unfortunately, as with any form of communication, the only way to know where something really came from is to find the source, whether an individual or a collaboration. Facts are still being discovered about decisions, choices and actions relating to Benghazi, years ago. Obfuscation of the source is intended to delay. It works. Masking the source behind fingers pointing to cultures is a "cheat", and cheaters do not like to be discovered. Personally, we have been presented with evidence of tools and techniques of Alinsky in the 2016 U. S. election.
Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.
Yup, I've been living in England for over 20 years and my English language proficiency is well above that of most of the locals, but I still had to look up SCOTUS and POTUS a few years ago (probably when I started reading HN actually). Now that I know them I still would never consider using them in writing (the former is actually reminiscent of something offensive).
I don't own a TV. :) I do watch some movies now and again though, especially when flying long haul but I never had one that mentioned those. Off the top of my head I can only think of 24 as a candidate but I never watched that.
I think it's not a matter of knowing the acronyms but rather using them in your writing. Even though I'm aware of POTUS, I would simply write "The President" or "The US President" - it comes much more natural, from all the times its been used in local media to refer to our own/foreign presidents. Same reasoning for the US Supreme Court.
I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.
Are you able to elaborate on how this case is related to the DNC hacks? ShadowBrokers was never accused of being the same as Guccifer2, as far as I understand.
I'm not saying he/she was. But do consider that in one case the most cursory circumstantial evidence is enough to convict, but in this case the same level of "evidence" is not enough to exonerate. Double standard, anyone?
No, as a fellow Russian I am fine to admit that the DNC hacks were probably done by us. When the leak happened, there was a little too much enthusiasm in Russian hacking circles. Guccifer2.0's style was also consistent with Russian writing.
But when the Shadowbrokers leak appeared, the community response was more like "wat."
'doktrin perhaps you have confused this subthread with a different one; it would be understandable since you've seen fit to post on this page sixteen times already. (Bonus points: you've used the phrase "paid shills" twice!) Unless you're willing to admit now that you are the DNC staffer who leaked all their dirty laundry to Wikileaks, you've got to admit that this tawdry hermeneutical argument no longer suffices to prove The Russians Did It.
> perhaps you have confused this subthread with a different one
No, but since you're obviously confused let me explain which thread we're in. The common topic, stretching back to the top comment, is armchair linguistic "analysis" :
>> (throwaway71958) Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "New York Times" as "NYT". The telltale signs are all over the text.
>> (atemerev) Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.
>> (doktrin) I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.
>> (throwaway71958) Sure. But if that's what you really think, then you don't get to assume that the DNC was hacked "by the Russians". Agreed?
>> (doktrin) Are you saying there's some letter written in broken english that's being used as proof of Russian involvement in the DNC hacks?
>> (jessaustin) Now that we know the "tools used" "proof" is worthless because CIA uses those tools too, is there anything else?
>> (doktrin) What does that have to do with my point about inferring identity based on textual clues in this blog post?
Which brings us back to the present - as you can see, it's you and throwaway who are trying to derail the thread at the last minute with red herrings about the DNC hacks. I'm not sure why you feel like it's super relevant here.
> Bonus points: you've used the phrase "paid shills" twice!
Again : you're confused. I used the phrase once (the other "use" you're thinking of was obviously a citation)
That's far from true. Professional propagandists from Russia would definitely know about that stuff because they'd follow the campaign. Other trolls outside USA would see headlines that could give them useful information. I have no idea of nationality of the author but nothing in it precludes them from being Russian. Especially at this level in the game where people might put talent or time into faking things to generate a specific reaction.
I'd be curious as to which particular "anti-mistakes" you had in mind (that you believe a non-native speaker wouldn't be likely to make). I have some hunches (like the over-use of linking verbs, and certain overly-idiomatic colocations), but I'd be curious as to what stands out in your view.
"The peoples" is unlikely. "-ing" after most verbs is unlikely. "the" is unlikely before "Freedom Caucus" and "NSC". There's no "the" in Russian, and ESL speakers often omit it, or put it where it doesn't really belong. The word "caucus" in itself is unlikely: I've never even heard of it before I moved to the US, it's not in common use abroad. "Whose" is unlikely. "To destroying" is very unlikely. "Will be happening" is unlikely ("will happen" is far more likely). "Be remembering" is very unlikely. "Do you be thinking" is very unlikely. And so on.
'freedom caucus' is a proper noun referring to an organization, they wouldn't need to know the meaning in order to use it. also you seem to ignore the possibility of using some machine translation assistance (eg for short phrases or sentences) which could account both for irregularities and correct verb conjugations.
To this day I don't know what the word "caucus" would even correspond to in Russian. And English/Russian language pair is notoriously bad in machine translation systems. We're talking borderline unreadable, in either direction.
> To this day I don't know what the word "caucus" would even correspond to in Russian.
It would vary depending on the meaning in English, too.
The kind of caucus that nominates candidates would be "выборный съезд".
Congressional caucus is actually trickier, just because there's usually no close equivalent in other parliamentary systems (including the Russian one). It's like a political faction, but 1) its platform is not all-encompassing, and 2) its membership is not exclusive (i.e. people can, and normally do, belong to several different caucuses). For that, I don't think there's any good word other than loaning the English word directly.
It's a proper noun that describes an obscure sub-structure of US Congress. Now, quickly, name some sub-structures of the Russian Duma for us, and tell us what Putin thinks about them.
Sure, but I'm betting that a russian backed attempt to sow chaos could hire someone capable of putting together a decent sentence in english. There could be all sorts of reasons for the broken sentence. Sentence structure can be a sort of fingerprint, I would probably run any message I had through google translate a few times until I had something which was still legible, but didn't sound like my writing. And that has the benefit of making it seem like a non-english speaker wrote the post, its all just misdirection.
This is incomplete: they need to also include the political affiliations of owners of "fact check" sites, and perhaps also FEC disclosure for donations above threshold, and sources of financial support. I.e. this site comes from PolitiFact, but its owner is a liberal and he took a bunch of money from Pierre Omidyar who also donated heavily to the Clinton Global Initiative. Puts the fact checks in a more "factual" light, IMO. Fact check on the fact check: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jan/14/...
Things have gotten hyper-partisan to the extreme in the past year or so, so you sometimes see things that are factually true rated as "mostly false" if they do not align with the narrative of the (typically liberal) owners.
At least one person is thinking straight. This is basically a blanket license to learn from everything you do, even if you do it in third party apps. Right now those apps are opaque, and Google can't see what you're doing there. As an ad company (which is what they are, first and foremost) this pisses them off pretty bad. They would like to know which brands you buy on Amazon, what you like on FB and Pinterest, who your friends are, etc. And they want to tie it all to your advertising GUID, preferably across devices and into the real world. The info doesn't even have to be in their cloud, as long as they're the only ones with access to it. It's pretty cool, in a way. It also ensures I'll never buy an Android phone.
Note however, that on Intel it's actually slower than run off the mill float32 linear algebra library like Eigen or OpenBLAS. Its main forte seems to be ARM.
They're also not very interested in making it easier for you to train models at home. Not that it's a big risk for them if you were able to do so: you don't have the data, and your models are only as good as your data, but they'd rather you came to their cloud and paid $2/hr per die for an outdated Tesla K80. Which, to their credit, they've made it very easy to hook up to your VM. Literally, you just tell them how many you need and your VM starts with that many GPUs attached. Super slick.
A lot of people (anecdotally, the majority) at Google have the "impostor syndrome", and the news of the experiment did nothing whatsoever to quell the symptoms. Now they don't know if they are, in fact, not impostors, but they do know that on average they perform about as well. :-)