Or a bunch of black powder, really. Multiple smallish devices in bags in a public place is totally within the angry or crazy lone wolf threat profile. I really hope it is that vs anything more organized.
That seems a little high like out of a video game... I took the USAR week long explosives familiarization course back in 93 at AIT at Redstone Arsenal (now why a minicomputer system operator had to take that course was a mystery, other than general safety and familiarization because it was a minicomputer for a TSA (basically what civilians would call an ammo depot)) and got to prime and set off a pound of old fashioned TNT and as a group we got to prime and set off a demilled 105 round. Based on crater size and general blast effect this is probably somewhere in between.
A pound of .mil TNT vaguely resembles a squarish soup can in size and a 105 round is, you guessed it, 105mm across so its dimensions are vaguely reminiscent of a 24oz/40oz big beer can. So what you're talking about is something pretty small, not the size of a car or truck or two 10 pound bags. But a bit bigger than a grenade. I got to throw two of those when I was in .mil and the damage is probably more severe than one of those can cause. Smoke pillar alone if nothing else.
I will agree that you could F up a 10 pound device such that all you get is the primer and booster and not the main charge. That sounds about right.
Crater really depends on how high off the pavement, too. I assumed "top of a trash can" but that might not be the case. Just clearly a small bag device, not a serious carbomb or anything, and based on the smoke I don't think it was military or commercial explosives. I'm really only familiar with bigger devices and telling artillery vs anfo, though.
Used to be that a terrorist was defined as someone who likes to further their agenda by means of spreading terror. Explosions, destruction, loss of life - that's all completely incidental to the actual terror.
A person running amok, in contrast, may be a terrorist (and people like Breivik certainly fit the bill in some aspects) but their main goal is committing mass murder, usually culminating in suicide. A convincing argument could be made that in some respects suicide bombers are also running amok, but we tend to reserve the term terrorist for a more organized type of crime that is supported by an entire network.
It's interesting to look at Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" -- published in 1907 -- which is based on a true story (of an anarchist attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894). All the elements of modern "terrorism" are there back then: a half-wit dupe bomber, nutjobs with a crazy ideology (anarchism in this case), and national actors manipulating them from behind the scenes.
> All the elements of modern "terrorism" are there back then: a half-wit dupe bomber, nutjobs with a crazy ideology (anarchism in this case), and national actors manipulating them from behind the scenes.
> Nechaev argued that the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain a support of masses, but to the contrary, inflict misery and fear on the common population. According to Nechayev, a revolutionary must terrorize civilians to incite rebellions.
Fact is, I also believe that the Tsarist secret police Okhrana was much better at actually fighting the "terrorists" using classic methods like "infiltrating and influencing revolutionary groups, rather than merely identifying and arresting their members", compared to what the US secret agencies are doing right now. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana)
It's crazy that I was just reading a couple of days ago about how the CIA had almost turned into a military unit because of its control over the drone war, instead of doing actual information agency work.
Another view of terrorism, in some ways similar to Nechayev's (in that the goal is revolution), is that it is an amplification attack. By committing acts of terror, a group forces the government to respond with stricter laws and more aggressive enforcement. Eventually, citizens who were not affected or inconvenienced very much under the original regime become significantly affected, and so they begin to oppose the government and support revolutionary causes, even if they are normally in favor of law and order and opposed to violence.
I believe this is the functional element of all terrorism, whether it is explicitly acknowledged or not. However, if that's true, not all terrorists recognize it; their goals might not be aligned with the ultimate consequences of popular revolution.
| "infiltrating and influencing revolutionary
| groups"
This happens in the US now, but usually the undercover official isn't attempting to convince them not to do something bad. They are either encouraged to do something bad, or allowed to, so that they can be caught in the act and everyone can get a good pat on the back for a job well-done in capturing the 'bad guys.'
For some reason this reminds me more of the Atlanta Summer Olympics or Moscow than the attacks on the World Trade Center. [edit to add links for clarity]
The aim of the WTC attack was to make a very symbolic action: the goal was to destroy three symbols of American power, its military, economic, and political might, though the last ended up physically unscathed. Obviously a huge number of deaths associated with it, but the symbolism was key. You knew exactly where the attackers stood--American power is evil--once you heard a description of the attacks.
This, in contrast, is incomprehensible violence. I can think of a dozen different viewpoints that could have driven it, but we'll have to wait for some idiotic statement from the criminals who did it before we have a clue "why" they did it.
>You knew exactly where the attackers stood--American power is evil
Who gives a fuck where they stand they will all be hunted down and killed. For all you know this bombing was because they don't believe women should run in marathons.
> For all you know this bombing was because they don't believe women should run in marathons.
Or maybe their entire family was killed as collateral damage in an american drone strike in Yemen. Or they though the IRS is taxing them too much and wanted to get back at the country. Or they are just fucking crazy and didn't even have a reason.
Stop making assumptions with no information whatsoever.
It certainly does matter. Not in terms of whether they're evil or not--they most assuredly are--but how we interpret their actions is very much going to be determined by who they are and what their goals are. If 9/11 had been committed by anti-abortionists or ecoterrorists, we would have had a very different situation on our hands than we did in our reality.
Without knowing the reasons it is hard to find out who did it and harder to prevent it happening in the future. This is regardless if you are in the "we should pay attention to their grievances in hopes they won't do it again" or "let's fucking blow their families up in retaliation" camp.
The book _the hacker crackdown_ asserts the phone company blamed a phone system crash that happened on MLK day on hackers and phreaks. Later it was determined a firmware upgrade crashed the network and the date was a co-incidence.
The first article (about Ryazan in Russia) says that it is FSB's job. And there was an apology. (FSB is new KGB, Ryazan is a city more than 100 miles from Moscow).
I don't see the connection to the current story unless you're implying that some 3-letter american agency have something to do with the explosions as a propaganda tool to justify lost freedoms, war spendings, etc.
Don't be silly. No one ever does that in a crisis. They just spout platitudes about 'doing everything possible' and never stop to think about what that actually means.
And if you point out the implications someone will quickly follow up by assuring you that 'no one would ever do that'. Sometimes I think the greatest weakness of policymakers is the delusion that other policymakers believe what they believe, and for the same reasons.
The thing I don't get, is if you know there are multiple devices, any opfor with half a brain is going to put them in the mass transit for follow up. So why evac people when sheltering in place is almost certainly safer? The TLDR is don't create a juicy concentrated target when you know for certain that someone is currently aiming at juicy concentrated targets.
Also if its an ongoing event, shelter in place means people pay pretty close attention to their environment, but scrambling in terror every random direction means a great opportunity for the opfor to drop something bad in the chaos and possibly escape.
I'm not saying lock down everyone for hours (days?) or don't evac a known bad location, but...
Transit is much harder and has a much stronger security presence - people in general are also far more alert for suspicious packages. It would be much tougher I'd think to get something like this onto a subway rather than a huge crowd.
Whoops I looked it up and apparently a "mall" in boston is what the rest of the world would call a boulevard or parkway. So they're actually evac a street lined with trees. My worry was it they're shoving people in immense lines thru the doors of what the rest of the world would call a "mall" making a tempting target for the opfor.
I am surprised its verified to be packages and not dudes wearing vests or whatever. There's no way to avoid the issue that getting the crowd to stampede means certain targets of opportunity will be very busy. If I were in Boston there's no way in hell I'd set foot on any mass transit until the evac is over.
The original point still stands, that people mostly sittin down can't get into too much mischief, "everybody get up and run around" results in huge opportunity for chaos, because not just the good guys, but the bad guys too will be up and running around.
It's not that uncommon in other parts of the US either. In Raleigh, they commonly referred to part of Fayetteville Street as "Fayettevill Street Mall".
"people mostly sittin down can't get into too much mischief"
Except the psychological stress of sitting quietly near where a bomb just went off is probably much worse than heading for home. I imagine that the police manpower needed to actually keep people from leaving would be substantial.
The alternative isn't "everybody get up and run around", it's "everybody head for home, where you feel safe." I know if I were police chief, I'd think long and hard about the trade-offs before I tried to stand in the way of people trying to get home. After all, they're going to have to go home eventually.
And we know of one location where the opposition is known to have planted bombs; why would you want to keep large numbers of people around that location? Why not disperse them to their homes, so they're not such a concentrated target?
That's assuming normal traffic flow. As someone famous said "quantity has a quality all it's own" - in large traffic flow conditions (as is the case with an evacuation), are all the same security precautions taken? Can they be sustained without a huge bump in the security staff? If new security staff are used impromptu, will they follow the same stringent standards?
I agree with VLM - these people should have been secured in place and not herded through a chokepoint in a rush.
It's easier to destroy than it is to create, for example create safety for the people there.
People outside a certain radius of the initial attack are almost certainly safer. The only thing you can do is get everyone out of the area. Keeping everyone there it seems... I'm confused about what the goal would be. You've got to move everyone out of there eventually so do it. I'm just trying to picture the huge amount of resources it would take to try and quarantine.
I think the difference is there isn't only a single route for people to evac the mall. It would be insane to have an area where there's several bombings in a large area, with one gateway out, and to then encourage everyone to bunch up at the gateway.
I grok'd your confusion about "mall" but just so you're aware, almost no one used the subway after the event. Everyone walked in a dispersed fashion. I did as well and kept to the back alleys and off the main race course. It was actually pretty ideal I think, people did well.
"Apparently cellphone service is SHUT DOWN! To make sure new devices are not remotely detonated!"
Oh no. This has been done a lot of times recently and all it means is future devices are going to be designed to go off when service is lost. Like every time you get a text message the 10 minute "reset" button is shorted. On the bright side AT&T outages are now a feature not a bug as they make constructing and transporting devices like this very exciting for the bad guys.
That seems like an overly complicated way of doing something that could just be done with a timer. (I don't mean to provide tips of any sort, but that seems kind of obvious to me.)
You are correct. This is a very common scenario. The trigger is the cell phone's vibration motor, which is removed so the IED can be connected to the phone. A timer is set, the signal to the motor is sent and activates the trigger, entirely without the use of radio waves and obviously without needing a cell tower.
1) No signal = the primaries have gone off and the area is swarming with panic evacuees and rescue personnel and full of news cameras = almost the definition of the perfect time for the secondaries to go off.
2) If the purpose of the attack is terror, what better way than shutting off communications then creating an intense demand for communications? And you get to make the authorities feel guilty about it?
3) This also fits in with jammer mentality. So if a jammer protects against IEDs, the obvious counter response is a weapon against jammers. So next year's run, if there is one, will have a motorcycle pace vehicle with a very highly publicized jammer mounted on it for the purpose of security theater, the pace cycle/jammer rides past the trivial to imagine and design jammer detector, and ...
It all boils down to I can't figure out a realistic alternative way for the good guys to help the bad guys more effectively than shutting down the cell network.
Yeah, due to localized jamming in Iraq (for convoys, using Warlock and better), there were "increasingly sophisticated" systems.
The correct way to make the best IED trigger would be something which required an ongoing cryptographic challenge with nonce or time, so you were safe from both having your circuit cut AND from people finding/replaying your signal.
Has any named official confirmed the cell service shutdown? I'm hearing the opposite.
The original shutdown report I heard was attributed to an unnamed BPD source. This is obviously a particularly easy rumor to spread when the networks are all jammed up with callers.
You can locally jam cell phone frequencies without involving the operators--seems like that'd be default bomb squad kit. I was along the racetrack at mile 23 and signal and data were extremely poor starting 10-15 minutes after the event--The local cells of the network could also have been simply overloaded.
The AP has walked back that article -- headline now reads "Cellphone use heavy, but still operating in Boston". I don't see any note of a retraction or correction.
Anyone know of any good resources to explain when news organizations find it ethical to transparently change articles like this, and when it isn't?
"Boston police say there was no specific intelligence warning of any kind of attack, and federal officials tonight say there is no reason to think that this is part of any larger threat. At this point they believe it is confined to Boston, but a meeting tonight will decide whether any kind of national alert will be sent out. There is no suspect in custody, authorities say, but some people are being questioned, including some with injuries who were taken to Boston hospitals.
One of those, a person in whom there is some interest, is
a young person who was here on a student visa,"
Cell service was really bad for an hour after the explosion. My wife has an older clamshell phone that seemed harder to connect I expect due to the absence of newer 3G frequencies. Not getting a signal make one very nervous at a time like that.
No, it's strawberry jam, can't you tell? (I'm sorry for the sarcasm, you've sort of asked for it. I'm officially curious: what else did you think it was?)
I'm glad people are posting photos like this - I hate how traditional media almost always post 'clean' pictures and video taken afterwards that make it hard to discern what actually happened.
FWIW, watch out for the Бостоне ("Boston" in Russian/Cyrillic) trending topic on Twitter. There's at least one extremely graphic photo of a gentleman who has lost the majority of his left leg. After seeing that, I'm opting to avoid further photos.
c'mon, people have smartphones. companies like facebook, twitter, foursquare, etc know your location and should be able to push notifications alerting people to stay away/at home.
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes guys, here I was trying to show a real need. I've been calling friends in NY/Boston the past 30min asking to see if they are OK + stay at home.
I was in Hawaii 2 weeks ago, and they were broadcasting these types of alerts to my girlfriend's phone (Android 4), to warn about a risk of flash floods. Android was even using text-to-speech to read the alert out loud, and automatically, which woke us up during the night!
Think how exactly the alerts happen is up to the OEM, beyond 'loud noise'. The iPhone uses something similar to the EBS tone in 1s bursts (it was 1AM when mine fired, so I can't say with certainty if it was the same tone or not). I've heard similar from other Android users, but I've shut off the alerts on all my phones since.
I started getting them sometime within the last year. Weather warnings and amber alerts. I always assumed that I started getting these as a result of some change in the Android software, but maybe it was a change in policy somewhere?
I received an Amber Alert for a girl from Philadelphia a few months ago on this system (or a similar one). It was surreal being in a restaurant and hearing over a dozen phones go off almost simultaneously.
I did not get an amber alert, and I am in Boston. Maybe due to the cell signal jamming to stop any additional detonations. I had to call family from Google Voice on my laptop to get in touch. Pretty crazy
That's one of the reasons I use Republic Wireless (I'm just a customer and not affilated in any way) - my cell phone can route calls over any open WiFi hotspot it can find.
Alerts can be sent out to particular geographic areas by restricting the cell towers they are distributed through, and "many providers have chosen to transmit WEAs using a technology that is separate and different from voice calls and SMS text messages. This technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services."
The bar an alert has to clear to go out over it is very high, however, to avoid people being desensitized by false alarms.
I wonder about the legal implications of providing a service like that. Lets say Facebook started an emergency alert system based on geographical data. What happens if they report a false emergency? What happens if they fail to report a real emergency? Would they be liable if they did not respond with their alerts in a timely manner?
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know, but if people came to rely on an emergency alert system that was not reliable... I would get nervous to say the least. Look at the bad press Google and Apple get whenever their maps lead someone into danger.
Emergency alert systems have been mandated by the federal government in one for or another (radio, TV, etc) for decades. With an increasing number of people no longer watching live TV or radio (due to DVRs and the Internet) it makes sense to mandate a new channel for emergency alerts in case of severe weather, etc., which is exactly what Congress does.
I don't think the objective is "perfect" targeting and delivery. The intent is to message as many people as possible within an affected area as quickly, as possible. IANAL, but I suspect it would be very difficult to hold companies liable if the service doesn't work properly - for one thing, it's not a service you're expressly paying them for, it's something they're doing as a public service.
Thanks for the downvotes guys, here I was trying to show a real need. I've been calling friends in NY/Boston the past 30min asking to see if they are OK + stay at home.
Even paid for Facebook's promote service to get the word out that other devices are being "detected" and that the issue can extent to NY.
NY on alert via Reuters: https://twitter.com/reuters
> Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner, tells Reuters that in response to #BostonMarathon, NY police stepping up security #breaking
Capitalization. Nonsensical reference to corporations that has nothing to do with this event. Lack of domain knowledge regarding already existing FCC notification systems. Random mention of New York, which is neither geographically proximal to Boston nor affected by this event.
EDIT: I know there's a statement regarding NY being "on alert" but there is no indication they have any reason to do so, or are doing so in reaction to anything.
North Korea, Al Qaeda, racists, or something else?
I honestly think anyone could claim responsibility but given the high explosives and the seemingly professional nature of the attack I'm guessing either NK, AQ, or a false-flag to start a war on the Korean peninsula.
It is waaaaay too early to be speculating who's behind it. Nobody knows any details, early reports from the scene of a terrible event like this are frequently confused and contradictory. Speculation at this moment is just firing shots in the dark.
I suppose you're right. Just strange, things have been so quiet for so long. The US is leaving Afghanistan, Iraq - apart from some sectarian violence has been quiet, and now this?
My mind just goes back to NK. With the heightened tensions and such... Seems too convenient.
It's not productive to speculate as to who is responsible. It could be anyone, or it could be a complete accident (gas leak?). Pointing blame before even the most basic facts are known is really, really poor.
There exist other material that go boom beyond gas. Just to take a random pick, maybe a truck with industrial chemicals was parked near. The majority of goes boom but a chunk get thrown away and just later goes boom too. Double explosion, but no detonated explosives.
Not saying its likely, but we really should start listing on what police say first before jumping directly to bombs.
At this point things seem to be pointing towards bombs. Police have reportedly recovered 2 or 3 undetonated devices (and set off a controlled explosion for one of them [1]). No news of who or why though.
But it is so professional. Two explosions, within seconds of each other. And these were decently powerful too considering they had to be small enough to hide in the crowds.
You might be right, but something about this just makes me thing /organised./
Presumably if it was some organized group we'll find out when they take credit for it. At this point we don't even know for sure if there were bombs involved -- we know there were explosions, but an explosion can happen for reasons other than a bomb going off.
Again, all speculating does at this point is ramp up fear and anxiety, which doesn't help anybody.
The precision doesn't rule out a lone perpetrator. Just because someone is "crazy" in the sense that they'd do something like this, it doesn't mean they lack the ability to make intricate plans.
Agreed. Crazy is just a dismissive term. Perfectly sane people can do things like murder other people - we have tons of them walking around today but we call them Veterans. Crazy, in this sense, should probably be replaced by societally dysfunctional.
Quite a few had bigger casualty lists, and many were more specifically aimed at political targets rather than large numbers of public, but fair point that a bunch were very similar or worse-done.
Two points I would make about the comparison though, firstly the IRA campaign was very much one of fear more than one of death - deaths were an added bonus. Of course maybe that's the case in Boston as well, but it's too early to know right now. Secondly, the word used was "professional" - were the IRA professional? I guess in the context of terrorist attacks, that's probably not really a relevant term.
Actually, the IRA typically issued warnings beforehand -- soon enough to evacuate, but too late to find the bomb. I've heard it described as a calculation to minimize civilian deaths that might stiffen British resolve.
The IRA had structure, with ranks. They had a political wing. They had funding and training and available weapons. They had PR and issued coded warnings and press releases.
Compare that to the London Nail Bomber (who killed three, and maimed many more) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copeland) who operated alone and got no funding from others.
Not sure how it seems professional. Compare it to the London bus bombings or Madrid, and it seems much more haphazard. For one thing, had it happened about two hours before, there was a much larger national / international audience when the winners were finishing.
No they tend to use guns or knifes (or in one case, bow and arrow) because they want to be up and close with the victims.
Bombs fit either muslims or crazy homegrown terroists, but those tend to put their bombs in cars, (and you can't park a car there) so my guess is muslims.
There have only been 3 major terror bombings in US history where cars have been used. One was the original WTC bombing. The other two were OK City and Bath School, back in 1927. There were a couple minor car bombs.
Most other domestic US bombers of all stripes used pipe bombs or suitcase bombs.
North Korea hasn't ever done anything like this so it's truly out of line to begin speculating that it's a "false-flag to start a war on the Korean peninsula" - way to blame the victim
North Korea does lot of evil and insane stuff and I'm quite a fan of conspiracy theories, but this just make no sense.
What is a terrorist attack? Cynically speaking a huge PR coup. A terrorist attack without a confession and a statement makes only sense if it is clear who was it and why they did it. Since the last thing is not given I'm expecting something like this anytime soon. Before there a narrative has formed. But what should NK "promote"?
But for NK this makes no sense. It would be suicide of the hole state. A false flag makes little sense since this is just too absurd to believe.
if the raw video streams from all of the surrounding areas were provided to the internet as a collective, I would bet they could trace the source 10x faster than the police.
Explosion happened somewhere around (edit) noon PST, 3pm EDT. A little before. Elite women marathon times are in the 2:15 and slower range. Elite men are 2:05 and slower. Not sure about likely times for the earlier groups.
The finish clock on the video is correct, but it's very likely for third wave runners who started forty minutes after the first wave. So they finished in 4:09, but 4:49 from the start of the elite race. Made no sense to me at first because I was in the first wave, was walking back to my hotel 4:09 after my start, but heard nothing. Tacking on forty minutes makes the timeline add up, as I was napping by then (and wondering why sirens were interrupting my nap).
Can someone just run a plain marathon without having to worry about this in modern civilized life? Come on. This isn't even crime, this is just insanity.
I'm willing to bet that running in a marathon is still statistically safer than taking the same trip in a car.
No more how much modern life keeps improving, tragedies will happen, whether by natural disasters or nutjobs. Actively fearing that which is outside of your control is pointless.
No, it's not pointless. It lets us plan, alerts us to potential consequences, and motivates us to take action that might have a long term impact, among many other things.
I've made no claims of my fear of marathons or that I will not attend them, I'm afraid of the total risk of conducting such affairs in life, I'm not the person who avoided planes because of 9/11 forever afterward. It was merely a simple remark of disgust.
Well walking is way more dangerous per mile than driving, this was touched on by Steve Levitt in Super Freakonomics, it looks like in Britain the mortality rate is about 10 times higher per vehicle mile http://road.cc/content/news/68212-dft-casualty-statistics-ra....
Of course, that is general foot transportation. Marathons have different risk factors, you aren't going to get hit by a car (if it's a well organized marathon with a set path and stuff) but I bet there are a lot of medical issues that arise from marathons and overexertion. If I were a betting man, I'd think the marathon was probably more dangerous.
That's interesting, I don't generally think to myself, "Hm, I could go drive around for an hour or I could go for an hour long walk", I usually think "Hm, I could drive to this place or bike over there (I don't usually walk)". Although I also don't really think about the risks of everyday activities anyway, so who knows.
It's really difficult to compare the risks of walking vs driving since usually they aren't really interchangeable and they have such different use cases. But the original comment was about running a marathon vs driving the same distance.
I know it is too early to speculate, but my money is on the muslims -- homegrown terrorists/IRA use car bombs and you couldn't get a car there, crazy people seem overwellmingly to prefer guns.
I'm sure "the Muslims" all get together, all 1.5 billion of them, to discuss their next bombing target. Please distinguish between a small group of violent extremists and a major world religion.
There are iranians and arabs arguing against islamic fundamentalists getting into Swedish politics. You know, those homophobes who "like" al-qaida on Facebook
Or, for the people who are in Boston or know anyone who is in Boston, this news is a very important notification. I don't think the news media was responsible for this incident.
To some extent they are. Assholes like the people that set this up love the press and the press loves them in a way. Every time some jerk kills off a bunch of innocents there is money to be made and without a platform I wonder how many of these idiots would do their deeds. Media and crime like this feed off each other.
This looks to be shaping up well. Might I suggest a new word for "Favorites" though. Maybe it is silly but it seems odd to me to Favorite gore pictures et. al. "Important" or "Impactful" or something else might be a better word when the content could be that of loss and suffering.
It's pretty good at holding traffic. Not so much when it comes to curious "stop by, see what's up, open a websocket, leave." But we're working on making it better, and it is back and running smooth now. Thanks for checking it out :)
as a general rule, avoid the word favorites altogether in any software, unless you are certain it will only be used in the US. We spell it favourites, and "favvOrrittez" as you seem to spell it, really grates. Esp in IE, whereas Net/moz always called them bookmarks. Fayvritz.
Basically it searches and refreshes all of the social media networks in real time (twitter, youtube, instagram, flickr, wordpress, blogger) and shows them in three streams, allowing you to "favorite" the best stuff you see and separate it out.
But the really cool stuff is what we can do with data of what users have favorited.
This is a really good question, and should be referring to all apis and their limits. This was my approach: Create a parser that lives off of apis, just under posted limits. Although we had a few thousand visitors today, there was only one direct line to each data source. There's a viewer server that reaches for data every so often depending on your desired speed (I think it's set to somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds) and broadcasts it. So if the parser goes down, or tags change, or services get mad, you can fix and restart without requiring clients to refresh. I'm still not in love with the solution, but it worked nicely today. Thanks!
Thanks for the explanation. I worked for a one of the eleven companies that still had rights to access the Firehose after the debacle and I saw a lot of great projects stymied by the new rules.
150 visitors on the site right now, so I guess it depends on your definition of "blowing up." We're getting visits from YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. but I haven't dug into where exactly.
And as to "launching" in a thread, I don't really consider this a full "launch." Our product is needed, so even though it isn't ready we pushed it live.
Yeah, like I said the product is brand new. It discards everything with "RT" or "Retweet" as well as a few other things in it (if it weren't finals week it would discard everything with "pray," but we should be taking our exams right now). Soon it will split up different tweets and show them to different people.
This is incredible.. but at the same time you've exposed me to the multitudes of people that are just so hungry to make a "viral" image. I can't believe it.
Yeah, this is a problem, especially with Instagram. As a random aside, watching this has been a really interesting look into how viral marketing is done.
I would like a way to filter out everything that includes the word "pray" in it unless it is from a respected news source. 90% of what any person ever says in response to everything that happens in america is "pray for it". It's sort of muddy to look at.
Actually it's just completely obnoxious. I like the site though.
You're absolutely right. "Pray for boston" is trending on Twitter and Instagram right now, so it really muddies up the feed. We'll get a way to put negative search terms in there.
It's horrific to see this happen. I hope that people make it out of this ok, and they get to bottom of who did this. Seeing these kinds of senseless attacks on the innocent is just disgusting.
Agreed. I try to be very understanding of the fact that it is usually the winner that decides who is the "good guy" and the "bad guy" in history, but doing something like this is "bad guy" regardless of the reason. Nothing but a senseless tragedy. My thoughts are with anyone who has friends and family affected.
Drones are flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan right now, atatcking innocent families. A Zionist invasion of Palestine in the 1940s is pushing into Gaza, the West Bank, southwest Syria, and innocent Palestinians are being killed daily - with US backing. The US is doing this all over the world, or enabling it. It's a laugh to see the people who invaded Iraq and tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib getting on their high horse. The chickens are just beginning to come home to roost in this case.
First of all I am a Canadian, living in Canada and have no association with the actions of the US Government. Secondly I do not condone killing of innocent people in any situation, and just because there are other instances of this happening in the world doesn't minimize the fact that this attack is wrong.
I am expressing my support to the victims of this tragedy and my disgust over an attack which was clearly ment to hurt and kill innocent people. If this discussion was about a similar attack anywhere else in the world by anyone I would have the same opinion of the attack. But it's not.
Well are you able to express the same sympathy and empathy for the people (twice as many) killed with handguns yesterday? and the day before? and the week before? and every day of every week for the entire year before?
are you able to express the same sympathy for the the 4 people killed in a drone attack yesterday in Pakistan?
are you able to express the same sympathy for the innocent people the U.S. has locked down in Guantanamo bay?
are you able to express the same sympathy for children killed by the DEA?
I don't know what happened to the /r/worldnews post, but that subreddit's rules do say that it's for non-US sources and news. Also, that post linked to a Gawker site, which for many is reason enough to kill it.
That's because the mods keep removing it -- reddit will have some contract with telegraph.uk or other such websites (they pay reddit for the higher traffic)
I think its because the threads are getting too much traffic. It seems like reddit first will make a thread read only then will remove it from the front page, this all seems temporary. This is all from observation though Im not sure the actual algorithms involved here.
621 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 387 ms ] threadhttp://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/15/explosion-reported-near...
Looks like there were two explosions.
Picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BH6fCgFCQAERWMB.jpg:large
More details http://www.wcvb.com/news/local/metro/Explosions-reported-nea...
"Witnesses said several victims lost limbs, and the area was being evacuated.
Many of the injured appeared to be spectators who gathered for the 117th running of the race."
Many more pictures(warning NSFW Gore):
http://deadspin.com/explosions-reported-at-the-boston-marath...
this looks really bad.
A pound of .mil TNT vaguely resembles a squarish soup can in size and a 105 round is, you guessed it, 105mm across so its dimensions are vaguely reminiscent of a 24oz/40oz big beer can. So what you're talking about is something pretty small, not the size of a car or truck or two 10 pound bags. But a bit bigger than a grenade. I got to throw two of those when I was in .mil and the damage is probably more severe than one of those can cause. Smoke pillar alone if nothing else.
I will agree that you could F up a 10 pound device such that all you get is the primer and booster and not the main charge. That sounds about right.
https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/323885037877608448
1., we don't know if it is terrorism (well, is a loner like breivik a terrorist or "just" running amok?)
2., it might not be over yet. mumbai took 60hours.
3., lots of people nowadays have someone there, a friend, an aquaintance. maybe just an online friend or simple source of joy
but yeah, terror spreads through news.
A person running amok, in contrast, may be a terrorist (and people like Breivik certainly fit the bill in some aspects) but their main goal is committing mass murder, usually culminating in suicide. A convincing argument could be made that in some respects suicide bombers are also running amok, but we tend to reserve the term terrorist for a more organized type of crime that is supported by an entire network.
> but yeah, terror spreads through news.
Absolutely.
It's interesting to look at Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" -- published in 1907 -- which is based on a true story (of an anarchist attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894). All the elements of modern "terrorism" are there back then: a half-wit dupe bomber, nutjobs with a crazy ideology (anarchism in this case), and national actors manipulating them from behind the scenes.
And before that there were of course the Russians, where I think everything started (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Russia#19th_centu...):
> Nechaev argued that the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain a support of masses, but to the contrary, inflict misery and fear on the common population. According to Nechayev, a revolutionary must terrorize civilians to incite rebellions.
Fact is, I also believe that the Tsarist secret police Okhrana was much better at actually fighting the "terrorists" using classic methods like "infiltrating and influencing revolutionary groups, rather than merely identifying and arresting their members", compared to what the US secret agencies are doing right now. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana)
It's crazy that I was just reading a couple of days ago about how the CIA had almost turned into a military unit because of its control over the drone war, instead of doing actual information agency work.
I believe this is the functional element of all terrorism, whether it is explicitly acknowledged or not. However, if that's true, not all terrorists recognize it; their goals might not be aligned with the ultimate consequences of popular revolution.
:(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings#Ryaz...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Olympic_Park_bombing
Condolences to friends and families of the injured and dead.
This, in contrast, is incomprehensible violence. I can think of a dozen different viewpoints that could have driven it, but we'll have to wait for some idiotic statement from the criminals who did it before we have a clue "why" they did it.
Who gives a fuck where they stand they will all be hunted down and killed. For all you know this bombing was because they don't believe women should run in marathons.
Or maybe their entire family was killed as collateral damage in an american drone strike in Yemen. Or they though the IRS is taxing them too much and wanted to get back at the country. Or they are just fucking crazy and didn't even have a reason.
Stop making assumptions with no information whatsoever.
Because turning you into them is what they wanted from the start.
I still think this was domestic actors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_Ja...
Not that people in the USA have any connection with that.
I don't see the connection to the current story unless you're implying that some 3-letter american agency have something to do with the explosions as a propaganda tool to justify lost freedoms, war spendings, etc.
BREAKING NEWS: Police getting multiple reports of unexploded devices around Boston
3.38 pm Central time.
Update:
The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe 28s
RT @billy_baker: "It's not safe to be here." - Boston Police evacuating Commonwealth Avenue mall at Gloucester.
3.45 Central time.
Update:
The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe 1m
Boston Police: If anyone knows of any information call about explosions: 1 800 494 TIPS
3.55 Central time.
Holy crap! UPDATE:
Apparently cellphone service is SHUT DOWN! To make sure new devices are not remotely detonated!
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/official-cellphone-service-sh...
4.10 PM Central Time!
And if you point out the implications someone will quickly follow up by assuring you that 'no one would ever do that'. Sometimes I think the greatest weakness of policymakers is the delusion that other policymakers believe what they believe, and for the same reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage
Also if its an ongoing event, shelter in place means people pay pretty close attention to their environment, but scrambling in terror every random direction means a great opportunity for the opfor to drop something bad in the chaos and possibly escape.
I'm not saying lock down everyone for hours (days?) or don't evac a known bad location, but...
I am surprised its verified to be packages and not dudes wearing vests or whatever. There's no way to avoid the issue that getting the crowd to stampede means certain targets of opportunity will be very busy. If I were in Boston there's no way in hell I'd set foot on any mass transit until the evac is over.
The original point still stands, that people mostly sittin down can't get into too much mischief, "everybody get up and run around" results in huge opportunity for chaos, because not just the good guys, but the bad guys too will be up and running around.
Except the psychological stress of sitting quietly near where a bomb just went off is probably much worse than heading for home. I imagine that the police manpower needed to actually keep people from leaving would be substantial.
The alternative isn't "everybody get up and run around", it's "everybody head for home, where you feel safe." I know if I were police chief, I'd think long and hard about the trade-offs before I tried to stand in the way of people trying to get home. After all, they're going to have to go home eventually.
And we know of one location where the opposition is known to have planted bombs; why would you want to keep large numbers of people around that location? Why not disperse them to their homes, so they're not such a concentrated target?
I agree with VLM - these people should have been secured in place and not herded through a chokepoint in a rush.
People outside a certain radius of the initial attack are almost certainly safer. The only thing you can do is get everyone out of the area. Keeping everyone there it seems... I'm confused about what the goal would be. You've got to move everyone out of there eventually so do it. I'm just trying to picture the huge amount of resources it would take to try and quarantine.
Oh no. This has been done a lot of times recently and all it means is future devices are going to be designed to go off when service is lost. Like every time you get a text message the 10 minute "reset" button is shorted. On the bright side AT&T outages are now a feature not a bug as they make constructing and transporting devices like this very exciting for the bad guys.
1) No signal = the primaries have gone off and the area is swarming with panic evacuees and rescue personnel and full of news cameras = almost the definition of the perfect time for the secondaries to go off.
2) If the purpose of the attack is terror, what better way than shutting off communications then creating an intense demand for communications? And you get to make the authorities feel guilty about it?
3) This also fits in with jammer mentality. So if a jammer protects against IEDs, the obvious counter response is a weapon against jammers. So next year's run, if there is one, will have a motorcycle pace vehicle with a very highly publicized jammer mounted on it for the purpose of security theater, the pace cycle/jammer rides past the trivial to imagine and design jammer detector, and ...
It all boils down to I can't figure out a realistic alternative way for the good guys to help the bad guys more effectively than shutting down the cell network.
The correct way to make the best IED trigger would be something which required an ongoing cryptographic challenge with nonce or time, so you were safe from both having your circuit cut AND from people finding/replaying your signal.
2. i don't think even suicide bombers are crazy enough to trust any american cellphone operator coverage claims.
The original shutdown report I heard was attributed to an unnamed BPD source. This is obviously a particularly easy rumor to spread when the networks are all jammed up with callers.
Edit: And, it seems, AT&T: https://twitter.com/ATT/status/323915702132150272
Anyone know of any good resources to explain when news organizations find it ethical to transparently change articles like this, and when it isn't?
"Boston police say there was no specific intelligence warning of any kind of attack, and federal officials tonight say there is no reason to think that this is part of any larger threat. At this point they believe it is confined to Boston, but a meeting tonight will decide whether any kind of national alert will be sent out. There is no suspect in custody, authorities say, but some people are being questioned, including some with injuries who were taken to Boston hospitals.
NBC reports.Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOcYcEkxzvg
Update:
7:30 P.M. EST
Pete Williams (NBC News):
"Has burns and seen running from the area"
"Being aggressively questioned now."
I hope this isn't PC for "being tortured".
That's really disturbing...
edit: "Thoſe who would give up Essential Liberty to purchaſe a little Temporary Safety, deſerve neither Liberty nor Safety."
http://www1.whdh.com/video/7newslive/
http://www.myfoxboston.com/category/235888/fox-25-live-video...
https://twitter.com/katz/status/323878815245946880
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes guys, here I was trying to show a real need. I've been calling friends in NY/Boston the past 30min asking to see if they are OK + stay at home.
They look like this — http://i.imgur.com/gWrDXFD.jpg
(I'm unclear on how these are delivered within the network, seems to be SMS but I can't source that)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
I haven't heard about whether emergency SMS were sent out for the Boston bombings.
Alerts can be sent out to particular geographic areas by restricting the cell towers they are distributed through, and "many providers have chosen to transmit WEAs using a technology that is separate and different from voice calls and SMS text messages. This technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services."
The bar an alert has to clear to go out over it is very high, however, to avoid people being desensitized by false alarms.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know, but if people came to rely on an emergency alert system that was not reliable... I would get nervous to say the least. Look at the bad press Google and Apple get whenever their maps lead someone into danger.
I don't think the objective is "perfect" targeting and delivery. The intent is to message as many people as possible within an affected area as quickly, as possible. IANAL, but I suspect it would be very difficult to hold companies liable if the service doesn't work properly - for one thing, it's not a service you're expressly paying them for, it's something they're doing as a public service.
Even paid for Facebook's promote service to get the word out that other devices are being "detected" and that the issue can extent to NY.
NY on alert via Reuters: https://twitter.com/reuters > Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner, tells Reuters that in response to #BostonMarathon, NY police stepping up security #breaking
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/323882328655028224
>Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner, tells Reuters that in response to #BostonMarathon, NY police stepping up security #breaking
Capitalization. Nonsensical reference to corporations that has nothing to do with this event. Lack of domain knowledge regarding already existing FCC notification systems. Random mention of New York, which is neither geographically proximal to Boston nor affected by this event.
EDIT: I know there's a statement regarding NY being "on alert" but there is no indication they have any reason to do so, or are doing so in reaction to anything.
Who knows is it's really being advised or if it makes sense if it is, but it's being reported as if it is.
I honestly think anyone could claim responsibility but given the high explosives and the seemingly professional nature of the attack I'm guessing either NK, AQ, or a false-flag to start a war on the Korean peninsula.
edit: Nice downvotes? We cannot speculate who?
My mind just goes back to NK. With the heightened tensions and such... Seems too convenient.
Nobody is pointing "blame." But we can discuss who the likely suspects would be.
Not saying its likely, but we really should start listing on what police say first before jumping directly to bombs.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/BostonDotCom/status/3238868777467...
You might be right, but something about this just makes me thing /organised./
Again, all speculating does at this point is ramp up fear and anxiety, which doesn't help anybody.
Two points I would make about the comparison though, firstly the IRA campaign was very much one of fear more than one of death - deaths were an added bonus. Of course maybe that's the case in Boston as well, but it's too early to know right now. Secondly, the word used was "professional" - were the IRA professional? I guess in the context of terrorist attacks, that's probably not really a relevant term.
The best description I have seen is here: http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/
Compare that to the London Nail Bomber (who killed three, and maimed many more) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copeland) who operated alone and got no funding from others.
Bombs fit either muslims or crazy homegrown terroists, but those tend to put their bombs in cars, (and you can't park a car there) so my guess is muslims.
Most other domestic US bombers of all stripes used pipe bombs or suitcase bombs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States
The comment you replied to has been heavily downvoted.
EDIT: The karma thresh hold for downvotes is currently 500. Or maybe 750?
Are you just trying to start an argument?
What is a terrorist attack? Cynically speaking a huge PR coup. A terrorist attack without a confession and a statement makes only sense if it is clear who was it and why they did it. Since the last thing is not given I'm expecting something like this anytime soon. Before there a narrative has formed. But what should NK "promote"?
But for NK this makes no sense. It would be suicide of the hole state. A false flag makes little sense since this is just too absurd to believe.
9:00 am Mobility Impaired
9:17 am Wheelchair Division
9:22 am Handcycles
9:32 am Elite Women
10:00 am Elite Men & Wave One
10:20 am Wave Two
10:40 am Wave Three
Explosion happened somewhere around (edit) noon PST, 3pm EDT. A little before. Elite women marathon times are in the 2:15 and slower range. Elite men are 2:05 and slower. Not sure about likely times for the earlier groups.
I think you are using start times in East Coast time and then doing calculations based on the explosion occurring West Coast time.....
The elites were long, long over the finish line when this happened.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJnC2zgriU&feature=playe...
No more how much modern life keeps improving, tragedies will happen, whether by natural disasters or nutjobs. Actively fearing that which is outside of your control is pointless.
Of course, that is general foot transportation. Marathons have different risk factors, you aren't going to get hit by a car (if it's a well organized marathon with a set path and stuff) but I bet there are a lot of medical issues that arise from marathons and overexertion. If I were a betting man, I'd think the marathon was probably more dangerous.
It's really difficult to compare the risks of walking vs driving since usually they aren't really interchangeable and they have such different use cases. But the original comment was about running a marathon vs driving the same distance.
In lots of places in the world, no.
I know it is too early to speculate, but my money is on the muslims -- homegrown terrorists/IRA use car bombs and you couldn't get a car there, crazy people seem overwellmingly to prefer guns.
There are iranians and arabs arguing against islamic fundamentalists getting into Swedish politics. You know, those homophobes who "like" al-qaida on Facebook
http://fastlane.grasswire.com/
PS. Here's our launchrock page if anyone cares http://grasswire.com
an on/off button for auto-refresh may be a good idea.
signed up for the notification email.
But the really cool stuff is what we can do with data of what users have favorited.
EDIT: Sorry, sorry--in a weird headspace from the news. In all seriousness, did you actually just launch a product in this thread?
EDIT2: Just remember, when launching a product--it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.
Proof: http://d.pr/i/LDao
And as to "launching" in a thread, I don't really consider this a full "launch." Our product is needed, so even though it isn't ready we pushed it live.
Out of curiosity, how are you picking which things to feed? Your ticker rate for tweets seems fixed, so you are discarding some things, right?
One of the many:
http://distilleryimage7.s3.amazonaws.com/a9ba58b6a61111e2901...
Actually it's just completely obnoxious. I like the site though.
In addition one explosion could be accidental, two not so.
I am expressing my support to the victims of this tragedy and my disgust over an attack which was clearly ment to hurt and kill innocent people. If this discussion was about a similar attack anywhere else in the world by anyone I would have the same opinion of the attack. But it's not.
are you able to express the same sympathy for the the 4 people killed in a drone attack yesterday in Pakistan?
are you able to express the same sympathy for the innocent people the U.S. has locked down in Guantanamo bay?
are you able to express the same sympathy for children killed by the DEA?
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/update-3-dead-explosions-rock-boston-...
[2] https://twitter.com/edhenryTV/status/323881163619962881
Update: (4:35PM EST) "A federal law-enforcement source confirmed to The Post there are at least 12 dead and nearly 50 injured." [3]
[3] http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/two_explosions_at_bost...
Video of second explosion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jMYObtjToU&feature=youtu...
Second angle of both explosions: http://bcove.me/qwi5k6ap
This link was #1 for about 10 minutes:
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cen7i/explosion_...
and now has vanished, along with all other sponsored links. A horrible tragedy like this seems leagues more important than the current top link:
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1cebz2/spotted_cookie...
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cerrp/boston_mar...
During disasters such as this, I appreciate reddit's scale (and diversity) for up-to-date information in the comments.