The English Language has been a backbone of Present Era, the more you pay a deaf ear towards it, the more you embroil yourself. Because running away from an impediment is futile instead learn to face it boldly. More specifically, if we speak of hot topics like career, education and a propitious life, the English Language is ineluctable. In Exams like SSC CPO and and SSC CGL where dealing with English and General Awareness Section is mandatory, reading this way is beneficial. If you find it arduous to learn new words in a plain mode, ADDA247 is here to buttress your learning skills in a more fun and productive way.
Taking felicitous snippet from well reputed newspaper editorials, our motive is not just to make you learn the English language but keep you updated with the current affairs and events across the world which are important from the govt exams point of view. Either you are a job aspirant or a working person or just want to outsmart others, this is a befitting platform to expedite your performance thoroughly.
When does it become obvious that a (1) heist has occurred? Loud alarms and (2) smatterings of broken glass (3) strewn are an obvious indication. Yet many of the greatest heists in history have been without spectacle, only becoming obvious much after the fact. Russia’s privatization in the early 1990s is a classic tale of deceit and (4) gullibility. Russia tried to shake off the all-encompassing ideology of communism and re-organized its economy. The reformers at the time undertook this through the means of a voucher privatization scheme, wherein vouchers for shares in more than 15,000 public-sector firms were freely distributed to 98% of the general Russian public. But soon a lack of understanding about this voucher programme resulted in people quickly trading away their shares for more material short term needs. The mistake made by Russian people only became apparent several years later when a whole new class of (5) oligarchs was born, who systematically stripped away assets from the newly-privatized enterprises. The consequences for the economy were devastating between 1991 and 1998. The rise of Vladimir Putin, who campaigned for (6) dismantling the oligarch class, and the erosion of any (7) semblance of democracy can be tied to this privatization effort. History is replete with similar examples of the unconscious heist and its effects when the heist becomes known.
An examination of Facebook’s business model bears out this statement. Facebook owns the digital version of our real-life relationships. While the internet permits a theoretically infinite number of digital (8) replications of these relationships in terms of monetary value, reside on and are owned by Facebook. We are not used to thinking of our digital relationships, and data as having value or being classified as assets due to smartphone era. The arguments made in Facebook’s defense range from ‘’most users like the product offering’’ to ‘’people who don’t like the service can just leave’’. It is reflected that we are stuck with Facebook, until another (9) paradigm shift as transformative as the smartphone era begins.
The current (10) backlash against Facebook, in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica fracas, should serve as a flashing red light. People have begun to feel a sense of disquiet around their relationship with the platform. Certainly, technologically elite opinion has turned sharply against Facebook. The question remains when that sentiment will filter down to the ordinary Facebook user. Perhaps the realization of one of the greatest unconscious heists in the modern world will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
1. HEIST (noun) : डकैती
Meaning: a crime in which valuable things are taken illegally and often violently from a place or person.
Synonyms: grab, theft, break-in, burglary, holdup, mugging, larceny, pilferage, robbery.
Antonyms: buying, purchasing, bestow, contributing, donating, handing over, presenting.
2. SMATTERING (noun) : कम मात्रा में
Meaning: a small amount of something.
Synonyms: couple, few, handful, scattering, smatter, sprinkling, fragment, iota, jot, modicum, scrap.
Antonyms: abundance, excess, plenty, surplus, peck, pile, plenitude, plenty, profusion, raft, reams, flock, horde, host, legion.
3. STREW (verb) : बिखेरना
Meaning: scatter or spread (things) untidily over a surface or area.
Synonyms: scatter, sow, spray, sprinkle, drizzle, dapple, fleck, speckle, stipple, spatter, disperse, distribute.
Antonyms: unnoticed, unfurnished, concentrated, gathered, collected.
4. GULLIBLE (adjective) : आसानी से धोखा खानेवाला
Meaning: easily deceived or tricked, and too willing to believe everything that other people say.
Synonyms: exploitable, naïve, unwary, credulous, uncritical, unsuspecting, unsuspicious
artless, guileless, innocent, unworldly, pliable.
Antonyms: cynical, mistrustful, skeptical, suspicious, wary, sophisticated, hardheaded
shrewd, streetwise.
5. OLIGARCHY (noun) : कुलीनतंत्र
Meaning: a small group of people having control of a country or organization.
Synonyms: autocrat, tyrant, oppressor, ringleader, usurper, authoritarian, absolutist, mogul.
Antonyms: follower, employee, worker, commoner, democrat.
6. DISMANTLING (noun) : उद्ध्वंसन
Meaning: the act of causing an organization or system to stop functioning by gradually reducing its power or purpose.
Synonyms: breaking down, disassembling, dismembering, dismounting, knocking down, detach, disaggregating, disuniting, dividing, separating.
Antonyms: building, erecting, combining, uniting, assembling, constructing, restoring, repairing.
7. SEMBLANCE (noun) : अनुरूपता
Meaning: the outward appearance or apparent form of something, especially when the reality is different.
Synonyms: appearance, seeming, impression, implication, insinuation, resemblance, demonstration, display, imitation, imposture, pose, pretense, representation.
Antonyms: difference, contrast, dissimilarity, assortment, distinction, dissimilitude, divergence, discord.
8. REPLICATION (noun) : प्रतिकृति
Meaning: the action of copying or reproducing something.
Synonyms: duplication, facsimile, imitation, reduplication, replica, reproduction, reiteration, renewal, repetition, reprise.
Antonyms: create, imagine, initiate, invent, originate, prototype.
9. PARADIGM (noun) : प्रतिमान
Meaning: a typical example or pattern of something; a pattern or model.
Synonyms: exemplar, model, standard, archetype, ideal, epitome, norm, paragon, idol.
Antonyms: imperfection, follower, atypical, antithesis.
10. BACKLASH (noun) : प्रतिक्रिया
Meaning: a strong negative reaction by a large number of people, especially to a social or political development.
Synonyms: backfire, ricochet, counteraction, retaliation, reverberation, opposition, resentment, rebuff, rebound.
Antonyms: decertify, forbid, invalidate, cause.
The straw that breaks the camel’s back (idiom): the last in a series of bad things that happen to make someone very upset, angry, etc.
IMPORTANT CURRENT AFFAIRS BASED ON ABOVE ARTICLE FOR GOVT EXAMS:
1. Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. Its website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users as of June 2017.
2. Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a British political consulting firm which combines data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. It was started in 2013. The firm maintains offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Its director and CEO is Alexander James Ashburner Nix (appointed in January 2015).
3. In 2016, CA worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as well as the Leave EU-campaign for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. CA’s role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in both countries.
4. In March 2018, The New York Times and The Observer reported on the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data breach, and unveiled that company used political purposes personal information acquired about Facebook users, by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes.
5. The data about the 50 million Facebook users were acquired from 2,70,000 Facebook users who shared the data with the app “thisisyourdigitallife”. By giving this third-party app permission to acquire their data, back in 2015, this also gave the app information about the friend network of those people, which resulted in information about 50 million users. The app developer breached Facebook’s terms of service by giving the data to Cambridge Analytica.
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