Ask HN: Urgent connection to Twitter support
HN,
For the past few hours Israel and Gaza have been exchanging rocket and missile attacks, with many casualties on both sides.
I am the admin for an automated emergency alert twitter feed that thousands of users depend on to receive alerts on incoming attacks.
Currently, we are approaching API limits and require immediate relaxation of some of the limits.Support tickets have been filed, but no answers just yet, and escalation is required.
Any connections to Twitter support staff that can help us expedite handling of this ticket would be awesome, and would be helpful to many who depend on this feed during this difficult time.
Thanks, @yuvadm
134 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] thread- 447 heavy rockets, - 374 air strike aggression, - 39 marine bombs, - 111 targeted homes, - 17 homes completely destroyed, - 95 homes partially destroyed, - 2 masjids attacked, - 1 hospital attacked, - 1 ambulance car attacked.
I can understand war, I understand loss and fear, but I can't understand how such a silly thing has reached Hacker News's front page.
My goal is to disseminate breaking news and alerts as quickly and widely as possible, to whomever needs it.
The mutual bloodshed is terrible, and, as a resident of Tel Aviv I'm personally affected, but there is one thing that has always perplexed me a bit, which is the perception of the actual ferocity of the conflict. Obviously, every death is a terrible loss, but this forum is fond of numbers, so while we're on the subject, here are some numbers:
The total number of deaths in the entire Israeli-Arab conflict over the past 70 years or so, is - according to Wikipedia - under 100,000. Out of which, about 25,000 are Israeli, a similar number are Palestinians, and the rest, I guess are casualties of all the other fighting arab countries combined, although the total seems to me a bit high. That's the total for the past 70 years.
By comparison, in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, Wikipedia puts the number of deaths at about 30,000 in each country in the last year alone. And the Mexican drug war has claimed the lives of about 56,000 since 2006; some estimates go as high as 100,000.
So, not to compare suffering, but the entire Israeli-Arab conflict has claimed, over the last 70 years, more or less the same number of lives as the drug war in Mexico in the past 6.
In short, both sides are trying to recruit the world's support for what is, in reality, a very low-intensity conflict compared to just about any other violent conflict, anywhere else in the world.
Did you seriously just write that? As in you are trying to have more Israelis killed so there will be balance?
Tell me I misunderstood you.
Those pictures under the #GazaUnderAttack are often fake (e.g. from other conflicts, such as Syria) as pointed out by the BBC [1] just yesterday.
Twitter posts are about as useful and hysterical (and in the literal meaning, not funny) as YouTube comments and for the large part do nothing to promote useful discussion or accurate reporting.
More to the point, why are you politicizing a discussion that so far has been thankfully apolitical?
[1]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-28198622
I find it strange that you created an account less than 20 minutes ago to take part in the "political discussion" yourself, unless you're working professionally as part of the "hasbara" effort?!
Which photos are the BBC referring to? They don't reference them so that calls into question the veracity of their claims.
It's more medium-intensity than low-intensity. Yes, it's not open war. But neither is it as low-key as IRA bombings or Basque separatism. The Israeli-Arab conflict not only has a ton of money flowing in from other sources, it's also something of a proxy war from bigger players. The same can't be said of things like the Second Congo War - the most deadly war since WWII, but was geopolitically unimportant, and holds no benefit or kudos for the major players if they did get involved. The Israeli-Arab conflict also affects a lot of people and politics outside the Levant - both sides have a lot of prominent political and financial agitators. Compare to Cambodia's killing fields, an internal event with over a million dead... that had very little effect outside the country, and little in the way of agitators to draw attention.
So why do people harp on about the Israeli-Arab conflict? Because Israelis and Arabs keep on demanding the world's attention over the conflict, really.
http://www.hdwallpapers.in/walls/why_so_serious-wide.jpg
A link to the twitter feed? Thanks.
I would very much be interested in helping build a similar system for Palestinians in Gaza, but from past attempts to organize similar cooperations, help is not necessarily wanted.
That being said, I am aware of several Palestinian users in Gaza who do follow this account for various purposes.
Israelis already have complete drone coverage of Gaza Strip, they don't need reports on hits. Palestinians cannot possibly use coordinates to aim homebrew rockets being used. Hit radius is e.g. around 1km for far range rockets.
EDIT: Seems like their rockets are reaching Tel Aviv so I guess they aren't as crude as they used to be...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/world/middleeast/by-phone-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad#Stories_involving_...
However, Rotter has time and again proven to be the best news community on the Israeli internet, bringing breaking news and alerts as they happen.
Also, note that all the hate speech on Rotter always takes place in the thread comments, never in the headlines, which is what we use for @rotternews.
Is it now? What about these, just in the past few hours:
* https://twitter.com/RotterNews/status/486621279823200256
* https://twitter.com/RotterNews/status/486621270738366464
* https://twitter.com/RotterNews/status/486631085724286976
* https://twitter.com/RotterNews/status/486625806932664320
Again, I will not translate because the views expressed in this Twitter feed are abhorrent to most Israelis, and are, quite frankly, idiotic and juvenile, but the Twitter feed itself is most certainly ultra right wing (and represents a small minority of Israelis).
The translation is not perfect but the general gist seems to be anger, hatred and calls for revenge towards Palestinians.
I will never forgive the Middle East for making me hate nationalists, while people like me in the rest of the enlightened world have long since moved on to hating capitalists
Let the state of #Israel to win and take your gloves without spare any Gazan!
Talk about putting the war home: Gazan Commander and his family immigrated to storm heaven.
(Side note, I'd perhaps change your Archimedes joke in your Twitter description, given where you are and what you're doing)
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093
This may not be as convenient as Twitter, but in case the answer from Twitter is negative, you can use these tools to broadcast updates in real time (I assume at this point, scalability is already an issue, and this is why I added HAProxy to the formula).
[1] http://faye.jcoglan.com
[2] http://www.haproxy.org
I would love to build a push system of my own (it's also right up my alley), but onboarding users to a proprietary system would be significantly harder.
But you can be sure if the US were launching missles and a Twitter feed were used to warn the targets then the owner of the account would be an enemy of the state.
War is horrible. The internet brings us all closer to it. But you are basically asking an American corporation to supply a war effort with ammunition to your side.
I care about information dissemination and about helping humans on both side of a conflict to have better insight into the chaos that is occurring around them.
Sure - that will get you priority with Twitter support!
We could try to throttle ourselves, and better filter e.g. duplicates, that is true.
They need to meet their audience where their audience can meet them. Just about every phone nowadays can access Twitter in an immediate and obvious way. Twitter will meet their audience where their audience needs to be met.
Hence, if their time constraint is 5min, fine by them, otherwise the question stands: what is their constraint.
And Twitter is not real time (this is obvious if you ever used it - it is more visible in the mobile version), there's no guarantee that if a tweet was sent by an account A in time T and the timeline of someone who follows A is opened some seconds later that tweet will show up.
There are about 3k people from twitter on linkedin. I am sure one of them might be able to help you.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/lh-xy5W...
HN, you are awesome!
https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...
Not to mention that Israel has active defense systems that alert your general area via sirens when missiles are coming.
Why is this on front page?
those relying on the service should not be penalized by the software development practices of the person who wrote it with the best of intentions, and the opportunity existed for that to be avoided via community outreach (and it worked).
Not to mention that twitter feed that gets it's news from another web site is a giant waste of time if you are trying to avoid rockets.
It seems to me you drank the kool-aid, without any fact checking.
If you want to do the 'lives' angle, if my life was at risk I would rely on billion dollar missile defense system. Not a delayed Twitter feed.
"Peter Lerner
Israel Defense Forces Spokesman for International Media & Commander of the IDF Social Media activities.."
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...
> Official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that six were killed. Those killed were forming a "human shield" on the roof of a home belonging to members of Hamas' militant wing, Palestinian sources said. Two were children, WAFA and Palestinian medical sources said.
It's a war, and collateral damage is, unfortunately, inevitable.
Don't try to equate the oppressor with the oppressed.
That being said, I suspect you are correct about a disparity in numbers on one side.
So it is with Hamas.
Not more than the Russians...
Also, it is not ok to use your own civilian population as human shields, raise a generation of kids to become violent martyrs for your cause, and sacrifice their lives for your ideological war, which include things like the "elimination of a Jewish state in Israel".
Hamas killing Palestinians living in Gaza who are having a wedding, which wasn't Islamic enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEud-cEjwQU
Indoctrinating children to hate and "kill Jews" to "liberate Palestine": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow's_Pioneers
By the way, in Hamas' view, "liberate Palestine" means to rid it of a Jewish state completely. If they took all that money to actually improve the education and quality of life of their citizens (which is what they are, essentially), they could be a legitimate government of a legitimate state. They already effectively have a state in the Gaza Strip. But their leaders would prefer to fight their ideological war and sacrifice their own people for it. As often is the case, it's the leaders of the people with their ideological ideas who are most responsible for the deaths of their own population.
I don't understand why anyone would say that. The things that differentiate Gaza and the west bank from a sovereign state are precisely the basis for the horrible conflict happening there.
Gaza could become a sovereign Palestinian state, it doesnt need a military to do so. No one is occupying it or attacking it, and it receives tons of American money. The problem is that their leaders are ideological crackpots, and many are corrupt on top of that, and they havent built up their economy, infrastructure, education etc in 7-8 years they controlled it. Instead they spent all their efforts on violent methods to advance an ideological agenda, and used their own people as human shields and used "state" funded TV and social centers to teach their kids to hate.
A state with entirely benign neighbors could, theoretically, endure without a military (not that such a state really exists... even Monaco has a few soldiers). Not being permitted to have a military does preclude a state from being considered sovereign.
In any case, you said "They already effectively have a state in the Gaza Strip." That's silly on a few levels, independent of the politics.
> No one is occupying it or attacking it
I know little about the conflict but I'm quite certain the people living there consider the blockade an aggressive act. I certainly would.
> The problem is that their leaders are ideological crackpots, and many are corrupt on top of that, and they havent built up their economy, infrastructure, education etc in 7-8 years they controlled it.
Gazans are definitely very badly served by the homicidal lunatics they've voted into office. I'd say the problem is a lot bigger than that. The lunatics are exploiting the situation but the conflict is a lot older than they are.
As for the blockade - it is there to try and prevent arms smuggling into Gaza which has happened before (via tunnels, boats etc) from groups in Iran, Syria, Egypt. Iran as aa state actually delivered arms to Hamas and Hezbollah. It uses the Palestinians as a wedge against Israel being in the region (which it refers to as the Zionist regime). In fact, to many Arab states, Palestinian Arabs are often just a political tool but when it comes to helping them they have a worse record than Israel. Consider the relationship of Kuwait with Palestinians, 500,000 of which they expelled following the Gulf War with NO right of return, for siding with Saddam. Consider the feud of the Hashemite dynastry with the PLO -- look up Black September in Jordan or how 7000 Palestinians in west bank were summarily killed during the 1967 war. Not much outcry was going on when Jordan controlled the West Bank. But when Israel controls it, there is a great outcry about how they live there. I would like to say that the outcry should have been in ALL cases. The Kurds in Turkey and Iraq have been fighting for independence for over 100 years and hardly anyone talks about Turkey's "occupation" of them, or Saddam's gassing of the kurds with Mustard gas after the Gulf war for siding with the USA (short version: we betrayed them and left after we achieved our ends just like we did with muhajideen and others who helped us win wars against our enemies back then).
Anyway -- it's a complex scenario, and history is replete with violent leaders. Arab states originally wanted to see the Jewish state completely gone, and for it to belong to Syria! And earlier than 1948, Arabs would never want to work with any organized Jewish groups, to create one state. That was the conclusion of the Peel commission, which said the only way is to separate into two states. Look up "Al Husseyni" on wikipedia for example.
Today, the way out is to elect moderate leaders who reject violent resistance in west bank and gaza. This should be OBVIOUS. If gaza doesnt attack Israel it will mot be physically attacked. In fact if someone else attacks Gaza, Israel can help defend it. Furthermore, if they provide a great education for their children, increase economic ties with Israel, and actually ENFORCE normal laws like against stop smuggling qassam rockets into Gaza, or firing them, or killing people, etc. then the blockade can be lifted eventually and they can trade freely with other nations.
One thing is obvious: if Gaza lays down their arms Israel would NOT go in there or attack anyone. Gaza leaders can form a state of their own and go work with other countries to build it up for their people. But the current leaders have a stangelehold on Gaza. This often happens when an army leaves as suddenly as Israel. This happened when England left India after Gandhi (a civil war in which by some counts 1,000,000 people died) and it's happening in Iraq with ISIS now. It's unfortunate. But we havent learned how to do nation building properly.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/world/middleeast/by-phone-...
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-tensions/i...
And why don't they have fancy bomb shelters like Israel!
The leaflets are practically taunts. Where are the people of Gaza to go? How are they to get out?
http://www.juancole.com/2014/07/numbers-people-there.html
Settlements are irrelevant. They also haven't expanded geographically since before the second intifada. Homes are built within the existing perimeters of the settlements.
Huh? Take your propaganda elsewhere.