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[Update: The New York Times has a story, Truck Attack in Nice, France: What We Know, and What We Don’t and an interactive map.]
LA Times is reporting:
A truck drove on to the sidewalk and plowed through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers who'd gathered to watch fireworks in the French resort city of Nice late Thursday in what officials and eyewitnesses described as a deliberate attack. The president of the Nice region says at least 75 people were killed and 50 injured. Eric Ciotti said on France Info radio that "it's a scene of horror." He said he was speaking from the scene.
Sylvie Toffin, a press officer with the local prefecture, said the truck "hit several people on a long trip" down the sidewalk near Nice's Palais de la Mediterranee, a building that fronts the beach. Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native who spoke to the AP nearby, said that he saw a truck drive into the crowd.
[...] The death toll appeared to be climbing. Calls to interior ministry and police officials were not returned. Images circulating on social media showed grisly scenes of piles of bodies in the street. The president of the Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur regional council, Christian Estrosi, said in a message posted to Twitter that dozens of people appear to have been killed.
[...] The president of the region that includes Nice says the truck that slammed into revelers celebrating Bastille Day on the city's waterfront was loaded with arms and grenades, and that the driver of the truck has now been killed by police.
Christian Estrosi told BFM TV that "the driver fired on the crowd, according to the police who killed him."
PBS reports:
Police killed the driver "after an exchange of gunfire," Eric Ciotti, the ranking politician of the Alpes-Maritime department that includes Nice, told BFM TV, according to the AP.
Damien Allemand, a journalist for Nice Matin, wrote online that "an enormous white truck came along at a crazy speed, turning the wheel to mow down the maximum number of people."
"I saw bodies flying like bowling pins along its route," he said. "Heard noises, cries that I will never forget."
The truck jumped onto a sidewalk and rammed into a crowd watching fireworks for Bastille Day in the resort city. An eyewitness at the scene told the AP that after striking the crowd, the driver emerged from the truck and began shooting.
"There was carnage on the road," said Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice native who spoke to the AP near the Promenade du Paillon. "Bodies everywhere."
The truck plowed into the crowd over a distance of more than a mile, Ciotti said.
Additional coverage:
Associate Press
ABC News
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Friday July 15 2016, @02:26AM
I'm not surprised I'm getting moderated in every direction for that post.
Shouldn't we expect journalists to report on uncomfortable facts, rather than reveal their own biases by selectively hiding truths that would be inconvenient to their worldview? Or to put it another way, if this was a native European would they hesitate to publish details about him? If the terrorist were a Nazi they'd be tripping over themselves to point it out. An unusual sense of paternalist racist-based morality, indeed.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 15 2016, @02:36AM
insane moderation - part of the reason many of us left /.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday July 15 2016, @02:52AM
It is partially a problem with a large user base. With only 5 points available to any post it becomes a battle between which circlejerk cares more about any particular post. With this smaller community we generally get people moderating when they actually care and have a reason. Since it is human nature I guess there isn't any permanent solution :/
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @06:07AM
It is extremely important to go non-linear, keeping up and down mods separate until the final step.
For example: effective = up*up-down
That is probably the cheapest calculation that will work well. You could do: effective = up - tan(down)
Another choice is: effective = up - max(down,2)
The design criteria using big-O notation is that O(up) is greater than O(down).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @06:26AM
I was thinking down-mods costing double the points.
Mod what ever inanity to near gospel status, but quit censoring.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @06:52AM
That doesn't solve the problem. Non-linearity is a hard requirement.
There are many functions that would work. Pick one and go with it.
Example: raise the up votes to the 3/2 power, and raise the down votes to the 2/3 power
Example: effective = up - log(1+down)
(Score: 2) by weeds on Friday July 15 2016, @12:36PM
Please explain why a down vote should have less weight than an up vote. I don't follow why there should be some sort of asymmetry.
Charging me double for a down vote smacks of "millennialism" - Only those who agree should mod and the dissenters should just keep quiet. That doesn't seem like the goal here.
If it was harder to get an up vote, would we get more insightful comments?
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @07:00PM
I'm not saying something simple like "a down vote should have less weight". That won't change anything. The value of a down vote relative to an up vote should not be constant. At first, down votes should be roughly equal in power to up votes. (could be more powerful or less powerful, but not by much) The power of a down vote should fade as the number of votes increases.
This is effectively a bonus to things that a significant group of people want to vote up. If there are 100 up votes and 110 down votes for something, then obviously it's a matter that people feel strongly about. Letting it die due to the 10-point loss is giving in to bland groupthink.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @09:03PM
More- down-voting was meant to prune glaringly obvious things like spam and whatnot. It wasn't intended to silence points of view you dislike.
Having down-votes cost more helps keep a balance between the majority view overwhelming dissenters. If a post really adds nothing, fine, down-vote it, but the notion that you are censoring should cost you more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @01:53PM
While we're throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, let me throw this out. We should keep discreet integer scores. I'm also with the school of thought that up and down mods should be of equal value.
I put the floor function around the up and down terms separately so that the up and down mod scores each sort of “level up” like in an RPG.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @02:13PM
Just ran the math, and the base that gives score 5 at 16 mods is 2 ^ 4/5 (will have to remember that as a handy base). I'd also keep u and d unbounded. Of course maybe we'd want to shoot for score 5 being only 4 or 8 up mods with no down mods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @02:54PM
I think not modding on breaking news is a better way. Have all posts locked at 2 or whatever. Breaking News allows people to react to big events and come together in face of adversity, muzzling their reaction is not a good way to foster community.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @05:31PM
Breaking News stories do not bring people together and foster a better community.
People make assumptions based on the limited information available and are overly emotional with their comments. This is a site that normally prides itself on reasonable, informed discussion and these types of stories produce discussions that are completely counter to that. It would almost be better if the comment section was closed for a cool-off period while information about the event is still coming in.
Informative posts (referenced links that actually provide updates or context for the event) should still be modded as such. The standard for Insightful mods are probably at its lowest during these Breaking News stories.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @02:47AM
Maybe they are not reporting on what they don't have information on. News organizations should not make assumptions and report them as facts. It isn't likely the identity of the man will remain a secret.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @03:31AM
Initial reports suggest that the perp is of Tunisian origin.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @06:46AM
> Shouldn't we expect journalists to report on uncomfortable facts, rather than reveal their own biases by selectively hiding truths that would be inconvenient to their worldview?
Facts without context are meaningless because they enable people to fill in the missing parts with their own biases which makes the end result effectively a lie.
By the time the full context is reported everybody remembers the lies they told themselves and nobody notices the whole story.
> If the terrorist were a Nazi they'd be tripping over themselves to point it out.
Would they? You want to know within mere hours (in the middle of the night no less) who this guy was and his backstory and you think 'they' would report all that so quickly for anyone else?
Did they report who and what the charleston shooter was within 6 hours? What about the colorado planned parenthood shooter?
You are just making shit up to validate your biases.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Friday July 15 2016, @02:46PM