U.S. government accuses Russia of hacking campaign to influence elections - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-government-officially-accuses-russia-of-hacking-campaign-to-influence-elections/2016/10/07/4e0b9654-8cbf-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html <comment> aaron-lebo This is silly. Check out the two major "targets": Clinton's emails and the DNC. Read about how the Clinton server was "secured" (hint: comically). Read about how the DNC has been getting hacked: very simple phishing scams. Everything about the DNC screams shoddy. Why haven't the Republicans been hacked? This isn't a question about politics, its that the DNC clearly has some operational problems.

No, what this really is is an information campaign that both countries are playing against each other. You've got Crimea, Syria, other hotspots. Check out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out Clinton's rhetoric: conflict.

Donald Trump being a racist Neville Chamberlain should make no one excited, but the neoliberal part of the Democratic party (which is clearly ascendant and has been for some time like the neoconservatives) doesn't like getting bullied in retaliation for being a bully.

<comment><USER3> What's silly is saying oh, since I read some stuff online about how crappy the DNC security is, I should probably chalk it up to some unknown actor for some vauge hand-wavy reasons instead of taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value.

Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think _they_ (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid? Why would you do anything other than take allegations of _yet another_ Kremlin attempt to interfere in fair elections as seriously as the people of Europe and Ukraine have learned, the hard way, that they must?

<comment><USER4> If the announcement came from, say, Major General Mark W. Westergren, USAF, Deputy Chief NSA/CSS, it would be more credible. He's not a political appointee, and should know in detail what's going on in this area.

<comment><USER5> All O7- and above are not apolitical; all flag officers in all services must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate at each promotion beyond O6. It's often a rubber stamping process, but it is there. Denial of promotion and individual intervention is relatively frequent.

Technically all officers also have this treatment but Senate oversight and intervention is much lower, and the batches are much bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's so annoying how journalists refuse to link to the source documents they are reporting on. Here it is, [https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/215-pr...](https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security- statement)

Not that it contains that much information. I would have liked to see a more technical breakdown of their reasoning.

<comment><USER7> It saddens me that this is the meat of the story and it's halfway down the page right now. Have an upvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are news like this a sign everyone is worried Trump might win so they are pulling all stops?

What's next, Trump is a Russian agent planted years ago and now taking over the country.

> The denunciation, made by the Office of the Director of National > Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security,

Don't know about others, but I don't really have much faith in the "Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security". Somehow they let the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach) hack happen, they are obviously incompetent even to protect our govt's data. I simply don't trust their "expert" opinion.

It is also funny how there is not much talk about the things discovered in the email. All attention is drawn to the boogeyman. It mentions how Wasserman- Schultz was forced to resign. I think it could have gotten a bit more in depth into what was embarrassing there... but that would not be playing according to the script probably.

<comment><USER9> > What's next, Trump is a Russian agent planted years ago and now taking over > the country.

I suspect it's more a warning to Russia that the NSA are now watching the election systems and stand ready to intervene if they see something strange going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like to trust things my government says, but I have doubts about this for two reasons. The administration is pulling out all the stops to help Clinton get elected and she is a hawk vs. Russia and Trump is probably less so.

Also, I do't really know for sure, but I think the Russia and China are most interested in growing the Eurasia economy in the direction they want, and in the USA we are putting most effort into maintaining our sole super power status.

Maybe I am not critical enough, but I think that USA, Russia, and China are all doing the right things to look out for their own self interest. It all seems to make sense.

<comment><USER11> > I like to trust things my government says, but I have doubts about this for > two reasons. The administration is pulling out all the stops to help Clinton > get elected and she is a hawk vs. Russia and Trump is probably less so.

The first of these reasons is arguably a statement of a reason to be skeptical about this statement, but the second is simply a statement of one plausible _motivation_ for the Russians to do exactly what the government is alleging that they have done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The US itself has become slightly less shy recently about it's efforts to manipulate elections. With high likelihood, direct criticism back and forth between these two superpowers is likely to inform those in smaller countries that their votes are subject - as they have been for a long time - <USER2> domestic and foreign manipulation, some of it very clever and very deniable.

In this case it should be introduced as a concept in civics courses that as an individual your vote is not 'your own' and an expression of your personal thoughts, but that your vote is a commodity that other people are trying, covertly, to convince you to spend certain ways. Civics courses would do well to train citizens not to believe their own states, not to believe major news outlets, and to otherwise vote when they feel they've come to be able to identify the discrete manipulative narratives coming from various political information warfare centers.

<comment><USER13> An aside: I've come to the conclusion that 1) we end up in the same threads, and 2) we almost consistently agree on these issues.

> Civics courses would do well to train citizens not to believe their own > states, not to believe major news outlets, and to otherwise vote when they > feel they've come to be able to identify the discrete manipulative > narratives coming from various political information warfare centers.

Never will this happen in public educational institutions. There is too much risk, and Civics courses generally glorify American history and then explain that the current electoral system works just the same as it did with the founding fathers, and that it has scaled miraculously with the country's population, demographics and wealth. A "realistic" Civics class would likely serve to alienate young voters, lead to yet more political apathy, or, in the case of the really angsty, lead to situations of civil unrest.

<comment><USER14> > Never will this happen in public educational institutions.

To disagree, this was my experience at HS and college.

A lot of my US history classes involved covering the history of corruption in the US. As an example, we took a look at the funding sources for the revolutionary war. That was a very direct and immediate way to deflate belief in everyone being involved solely for the sake of liberty.

Add on top of that a Philosophy class that had us apply formal logic to the statements of politicians. One of the most amusing classes I've ever had, I got to diagram out political speeches and see that they, quite literally, equaled out to null!

<comment><USER13> > To disagree, this was my experience at HS and college. A lot of my US > history classes involved covering the history of corruption in the US. As an > example, we took a look at the funding sources for the revolutionary war. > That was a very direct and immediate way to deflate belief in everyone being > involved solely for the sake of liberty.

If you don't mind me asking: when and where did you graduate from high school and did you learn this in a Civics course or an American History course? I'm curious if it's a generational thing, or a geographical thing (ie coastal vs midwest, rural vs urban).

<comment><USER14> Seattle WA. Experiences described are from College, my HS courses also encouraged lots of free thinking, but my most memorable HS courses are from European history. The often chanted refrain in class was "OLD DEAD WHITE MEN", in response to "and who did this?" That and "The holy roman empire wasn't holy, wasn't roman, and wasn't much of an empire."

Then again, part of the class was taught in relationship to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so the teacher was a bit eccentric. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The US tampers with elections openly all over the world including in the election of so called allies.

This isn't a jab at the US just a simple fact, swaying the local political opinions of both your allies and your enemies is a pretty standard practice in geopolitics and diplomacy.

<comment><USER16> Right. We shouldn't pretend that the US doesn't do this to other countries. What happened in the Ukraine, for example, almost certainly wasn't an organically grown domestic insurrection. That was nurtured by NGOs and foreign intelligence agencies.

Nonetheless-- it's one thing when the superpowers do that to smaller countries, and another, far more dangerous thing when they start doing it to _each other_. We're in uncharted territory here. As you saw in the Ukraine (and Syria, and Egypt, and so on and so forth), when the political system fails, you have violence, and the US isn't going to stand by and watch Russia destroy the integrity of our elections. And our means for retaliating are untested, and the risk of escalation is pretty high.

<comment><USER17> It was absolutely domestically grown -- had the foreign intelligence and NGO's been as strong as you suggest, things would have never gotten to that point, as the money and effort spent on influence by Russia absolutely dwarfed everything else: Ukraine has never been high on anyone else's radar.

The reason Russians have not been particularly successful is mostly due to certain widespread delusions in Russian society, that result in people at all ranks seeing the entire Russia/Ukraine split as unnatural. What I mean is, when you are coming from a prior that there were no underlying differences in 1991, and Ukraine before then was simply a province of a Russian state operating under a different name, of course any disagreement could only be seen as a result of external meddling since that time. Of course, when this view conflicts with reality, the failures are attributed to foreign meddling being stronger than unticipated...

<comment><USER15> You would be surprised [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy#Ukraine)

And this is just one NGO.

The "West" forced Ukraine to choose between it and Russia, including the looming free trade deal with the EU being contingent on that.

There is/was also a plan to bypass the Russian controlled oil and more importantly natural gas pipelines that are keeping the lights in Europe both the conflict in the Ukraine and the previous one in Georgia are directly connected to the proposed caspian pipelines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans- Caspian_Gas_Pipeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans- Caspian_Gas_Pipeline)

While you can make Russia look antagonistic it is just as easy to make the west look that and even worse, the west effectively violated the non-formal agreement that maintained peace after the fall of the soviet union and that is that the former states would effectively be a buffer zone.

The EU and NATO have (and it is very important to note that Russia does not distinguish between the two, and effectively nor should they) been expanding into these buffer states and worse they are expanding into the caspian region and beyond leaving Russia effectively surrounded.

Russia is a landlocked country, it always was, it always was missing a single important thing and that is a warm water port in an open sea, this is why Russia invaded Manchuria/Korea multiple times since the 19th century and this is why Russia would not tolerate any loss of it's ports in the black sea or syria.

The black sea is enclosed by the bosphorus which controlled by NATO, Kaliningrad is a tiny enclave surrounded by NATO and any ship sailing out of it would have to go through the fjords and the northern sea another NATO controlled territory, on the other side of the globe Vladivostok is not a warm water port (although global warming might help Russia with that problem soon enough), effectively Russia has to rely on the "kindness" of NATO to allow it's ships to get out into the ocean, this puts them at a huge disadvantage.

Another key aspect of Russian geopolitics is their "monopoly" on gas pipelines into Europe both from their own reserves and those coming from the caspian region and beyond, this is what keeps Russia relevant and what gives them some power over what is going on around them.

With NATO effectively being able to shut down all Russian sea travel and make Russia's only "diplomatic tool" other than it's strategic nuclear arsenal irrelevant we are not heading into a pleasant direction.

<comment><USER18> > With NATO effectively being able to shut down all Russian sea travel and > make Russia's only "diplomatic tool" other than it's strategic nuclear > arsenal irrelevant we are not heading into a pleasant direction.

Why is Russia entitled to imperial pretenses when they are no longer an empire?

I get what you are saying and it does make sense up to NATO is making territorial hay while the unipolar sunshine lasts, but where it stops making sense is _why_ is Russia entitled to buffer zones etc.

Why isn't Poland entitled to the same, for example. Or should people across the water from St. Petersburg complain about Russian naval activity so close to them? We would laugh at all this since (reality check) they are not "powers".

Russia demands to be treated like a "power", its propaganda sites are entirely silent as to why every nation that was liberated from USSR's empire is more than grateful for having their nomnal independence back, etc.

The second thing to note here is that it is Russia, Russian propaganda sites, and a minority western critical voices that have raised the stakes from literally some minor local action to threats of "Nuclear War" and "WWIII".

Regardless of how one feels about the clearly aggressive actions of the West in the past 2 decades, to mistake Russia for some kind of peacenik nation, or the Russian Yoke as a gentle alternative to bankster international is a gross error, in my opinion.

<comment><USER15> I'm not saying they are entitled to anything; it's just the other side of the picture.

You are also using an incorrect analogy Poland is already entitled its part of NATO, Russia isn't.

Real world politics are about interest and power, there are no absolute and objective right and wrongs at these levels, no one claims Russia is a peacenik nation, most nations aren't.

As for what and what does not make sense to you; I cannot help you in this regard mostly because you seem to treat a statement of a condition as a position.

This is reality we treat entitlement today on different aspects one of which is ones ability to enforce their claims to what they are entitled too.

Russia due to their limitations tend to do it asymmetrically, hence Russian nuclear development in response to ABM deployments.

This hack is actually fairly unique because in the manner to which Russia chose to respond; the US tampers with their local geopolitical situation Russia tampers with US elections.

Likely it's due to the fact that there aren't any proxies of note that Russia can currently influence but it's an interesting departure from common discourse nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess I don't see how dumping DNC databases as "Guccifer 2.0" is really doing much negative influencing if it is actually providing legitimate information and making the process more transparent to American voters. Isn't transparency into the political process a core part of what makes a democracy? The parties should _want_ to be as open as possible, ideally.

This feels like a deflection and a way to point the finger politically. If they're causing a denial of service on election day by taking out voter registration databases, rooting those shitty Diebold machines, etc., well, that's really influencing the election.

If the Obama administration is going to complain to the public about Russia fucking with American elections, they should be just as willing to retaliate for it in some public manner; if that's diplomatic, so be it in the realm of the UN/ICJ. IMO the foreign policy strategy against Russia is spineless, and Russia/Putin takes advantage of it; see Crimean aggression, the Syrian "ceasefire", this Guccifer nonsense. I don't personally have a solution, but showing teeth at Putin doesn't really seem to hinder him. Sometimes you need to bite so people know you can and will make good on your threats.

<comment><USER17> Obama administration's approach to conflict has generally been "they are making threats and can escalate them, if they do, we would not be willing to respond in kind, therefore let's do nothing and avoid conflict, and hopefully eventually things will be nice between us again, because somehow magically history is on our side". This is quite a radical departure from the "peace through strength" approach that has kept the US safe for the 60 years before that.

Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the fatal fault with this line of thinking :(

<comment><USER9> > Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the > fatal fault with this line of thinking :(

Of course, anyone who has grown up around gangs can see the fault in "We must retaliate for all insults or they will quit fearing us and take our territory." Occasionally, you wind up with everybody dead or in the hospital.

Fortunately, our leaders are mostly adults who understand that there is nuance to diplomacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seem plausible Russia would be doing this. Russian media, which is controlled by the Kremlin, has made clear it is completely against Clinton, and for Trump.

We've got some Russian trollers here. Putin would like everyone to think he is just great, but he knows he can't do that. So he has his trollers tell everyone that all the Western countries are awful, so people will give up supporting anyone, and he will be free to go ahead unopposed.

The reality is that the West, for all its many faults, is 10 times better than Putin's Russia. Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts.

</comment><comment><USER12> There are three superpower poles in the world.

1\. The United States, as the primary hegemon.

2\. Russia, which is still powerful but in 'wane' after containment and the costs of the Cold War.

3\. China, the preliminary rising power on the world stage.

These three powers have found cybertreaties between China and the US and China and Russia.

But Russia and the United States have not yet found a good framework for cyberagreement.

Is there a candidate or administration today in the United States that considers finding a cyber treaty between the US and Russia a priority?

It seems to me, based on the past few decades of cyber war and the conversations and priorities inside of the beltway that the US considers it's cyberwar activities against the Russians more important than a cyber arms armistice.

Given the US's superiority in cyberwarfare, total as it may not be, this recent surge in Russian modernization and activity looks a little bit like "complaining" and less like "moral acumen".

The United States should consider drawing up stronger garuntees for Russia about it's cyberweaponization. Handled correctly, the results from superpower agreements could percolate down to Middle Powers, regional powers and third world nations to become a basis for global cyber norms and eventually a basis for international law.

It seems to me that complaining and upping the ante, while it might theoretically lead to "peace through conquer", will work to undo any concept of cyber norms or international law.

<comment><USER20> Each power has its own norms for network exploitation operations, and thinks their own model is the only "right" one.

1\. United States, FVEY, Germany model: exfiltrate the maximum amount of information from foreign governments and an expedient amount of information from SOEs to satisfy unlimited desire of information by decision makers in government. Occasionally throw a bone to domestic business but only via government trade negotiators. Perform offensive actions only in warfare or warfare-like situations. Leave coups, election manipulation, etc to HUMINT and military action only.

2\. China (pre-2016) model: exfiltrate the maximum amount of information from companies and an expedient amount of information from foreign governments, to provide commercial information to satisfy unlimited desire of information by domestic businesses and SOEs and to satisfy limited desire of information by decision makers in government.

3\. China (2016) model (ostensibly with the new treaty): exfiltrate an expedient amount of information from foreign governments.

4\. France model: exfiltrate an expedient amount of information from companies and foreign governments to satisfy desire of information by domestic businesses and decision makers in government.

5\. Russia (pre-2016) model: exfiltrate an expedient amount of information from foreign governments. Perform offensive actions only in warfare or warfare-like situations.

6\. Russia (2016) model: exfiltrate an expedient amount of information from foreign governments. Perform destructive actions only in warfare or warfare- like situations. _Perform election manipulation via network exploitation in addition to HUMINT and military action!_

I think the "complaining" is an apt description of what's going on. However, complaining is a legitimate reaction to having one's elections tampered with. Iran has a legitimate complaint to the US's meddling in its affairs in the 1950s.

Pres. Obama clearly sees a cyber treaty as a priority, as the US is in the process of negotiations with China. Russia should follow.

I agree that complaining by itself isn't productive. Escalation would also be bad. Norms established by treaties appear to be the only effective method. It mostly put an end to the great powers using chemical weapons.

<comment><USER12> Pretty neat attempt at a summary.

I feel you've understated the US investment in manipulating elections. Sentry Eagle's feeding information into HUMINT isn't without a commitment within HUMINT and CIA to work in the psychological and political domains.

I'm not sure I feel that your list is a list of the norms that each have put forward to establish. The US is closer to a representation of their proposed norms. The others are closer to a description of operations/dossiers.

It would be very interesting to read a report on proposed norms next to dossiers and strategic incentives for each country.

We fully agree that norms established by treaties is a nice path forward.

<comment><USER20> I don't know if I quantified US election manipulation; I think it's fair to take it for granted that most 20th century Central American elections were manipulated by the United States. Does this satisfy your requirement?

Your allusion to Sentry Eagle feeding information to HUMINT is pretty transitive; by that logic, Taco Bell helps HUMINT because they have a franchise in the CIA food court. (Not to mention, a CNA program has nothing to do with information gathering)

True, stated vs observed are different. I believe the US and French stated match the observed, while the new Chinese statement hasn't been definitively established (detected Chinese intrusions in U.S. companies have sharply decreased, but maybe they improved tradecraft). Russian statements recently are bizarre and serve to promote their new "question everything, including facts" PR push.

Most likely the path forward to deescalate the defensive Russian position is to limit aggressive NATO maneuvers, e.g. reconsider emplacing the missile defense installations in peripheral NATO states.

<comment><USER12> Sentry Eagle feeding SIGINT to HUMINT is nothing like Taco Bell.

What an absurd thing to say.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, it's pretty absurd. I went a little bit too far. BTW, I didn't downvote your posts; I enjoyed the discussion.

<comment><USER12> I'm with you. I was rushing out for the weekend so didn't get the time to write anything more comprehensive anyway.

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From the underlying statement:

> The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com > and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the > methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts

I really hope that we have better evidence than this. The US intelligence community has made errors before, even in circumstances where they released considerably more information than this.

Given that the attacks have been directed at a particular party, and that party is the one currently in power in the executive branch, establishing that the results of the investigation are truly objective should be a critical goal here, to prevent this press release itself being seen as an attempt to influence the election.

<comment><USER11> > I really hope that we have better evidence than this.

That's not the evidence, its the conclusion. (And its a conclusion reached by private attribution firms and made public long before any official government statement, at least as to the _methods_ part.)

<comment><USER21> I don't want to bandy words -- what they say is that the attacks "... are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts". This seems to be an extremely weak statement -- that they are "consistent with", rather than "can be unambiguously traced to".

Assuming good faith in the intelligence community, we can only assume that these "consistencies" would be difficult or impossible for another actor (a different state or a rogue agent) to mimic. The statement is phrased so weakly that it is difficult to say this with confidence. Because of the political situation, government agencies should be extremely careful to avoid making statements like this unless there can be concrete assurances that the conclusions are fully supported by the evidence, without any political agenda attached.

<comment><USER11> Again the attribution by private security firms, and it's (general, at least, but more specific than the government statement had specified) basis had been public for some time.

And, in any case, even if government agencies are as careful as you suggest, you are unlikely to be able to distinguish that, because the kind of evidence that works fully support it us not the kind of evidence that could be fully disclosed without compromising future intelligence activities.

<comment><USER22> I've read those reports, and I did not find the evidence particularly convincing. Much of it was of the type "if you want to make it look like Russia did this, what metadata should we conveniently leave lying around?"

IIRC the major points of evidence were a Cyrillic character set attached to an SSH session, and Russian IP addresses connecting to a VPN website.

This is hardly substantial evidence.

And don't fool yourself - these "private firms" have no interest in biting the hand that feeds them. They want the next contract too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> An important point in understanding Russia: Russia is not a superpower; it's a new situation, not the cold war. They are a sinking regional power with nuclear weapons, trying to find a cost-effective way to have some influence.

In the cold war, the Soviet Union was far larger than Russia today: It included Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian states, Armenia and many others. And the states it dominated (part of the the Warsaw Pact) were much of Eastern and Central Europe, including half of Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, and more.

Russia no longer controls those countries and many of the largest ones changed sides to NATO, greatly shifting the balance of power. Power flows from money and population:

\---

GDP/population 1977 (best I could find in a quick search):[0]

* Warsaw Pact: $1.2 trillion / 366 million

* NATO: $3.4 trillion / 563 million (I think that includes France, which was allied but not part of NATO).

\---

~2016 [1]

* Russia: $1.1 trillion / 144 million (and shrinking, afaik)

* NATO (2014): $37.5 trillion / 906 million (and growing)

* Spain: $1.7 trillion / 46 million

* Germany: $3.8 trillion / 82 million

* Canada: $1.4 trillion / 36 million

* U.S.: $18.5 trillion / 325 million

\---

Russia cannot compete with NATO. Their economy is significantly smaller than Spain's and than Canada's - those nations could afford more powerful militaries than Russia's if they chose.

[0] (PDF) [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/cbo/77...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/cbo/77doc579.pdf)

[1] Wikipedia

<comment><USER24> The size of Russia's military (especially the number of nuclear weapons) says that Russia is considerably more than a regional power.

Sinking (that is, declining in influence/power)? I can go with that.

Others (Canada/Spain) could have larger militaries than Russia if they choose? Great, but _they don 't choose to do that_. Russia does. When the shooting starts, how much you _could have spent_ on our military doesn't matter.

<comment><USER23> > When the shooting starts, how much you could have spent on our military > doesn't matter.

Agreed. However, NATO, and the U.S. in particular, still outspend Russia by a very wide margin.

> The size of Russia's military

From what I've read, they lack the capability or money to deploy more than small forces beyond their borders. Russia is poor, has serious economic problems, and wars are very expensive. Iraq cost the U.S. over a trillion dollars, IIRC.

Everything they do is on the cheap, designed to maximize the appearance of strength: In Syria Russia sticks to the air, and we don't know how many missions (or at least I don't), how much it costs or for how long they can afford it. In Ukraine they used small amounts of special forces to seize Ukraine's southern peninsula, Crimea, and support insurgents mostly with equipment.

They hide deaths of the any Russian troops in Ukraine, indicating that there may not be much public support for foreign deployments.

> especially the number of nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons make a strong impression but are status symbols; in practice, they are almost unusable. They do prevent the invasion of Russia, but nobody was going to do that anyway except, as a long shot, China in the far east. Probably they do make the U.S. and Russian forces in Syria keep a distance from each other, to avoid unintentional conflict. Otherwise, they provide no influence; nobody worries that Russia will nuke them.

<comment><USER25> > In Syria Russia sticks to the air,

FWIW, it's not entirely correct. There are specs ops and advisor teams on the ground (and there have already been officially reported casualties). But beyond that, some people who previously fought for the separatist militias in Ukraine told me that quite a few of their militia friends have been unofficially "contracted" to Syria. This appears a convenient arrangement, since when they get killed, it doesn't get reported as a military casualty, and doesn't really need to be reported at all.

Similar to the use of contractors by US in Iraq, I guess - but these guys are actually used at the frontline to support Assad troops in direct engagements, not just to provide security for civilians etc.

BTW, ironically, they have a very low opinion of the local troops. One guy over there joked that the war is essentially fought by foreign troops against each other on either side (Assad and ISIS), whereas local recruits on either side are really unmotivated to fight, and are easily routed or forced to surrender. The only locals he considered to be a viable, motivated fighting force capable of winning without foreign manpower backing them are the Kurds.

(This is unverified Internet rumors, I don't know those people personally, you don't know me personally, so take it all with a grain of salt.)

<comment><USER23> I've read in several credible sources report that former anti-Russian insurgents from the Caucuses (e.g., Chechnya) are also in Syria, and rumors say Russia facilitated that.

<comment><USER25> This is likely a conflation of two different facts.

On one hand, the Syrian branch of what later became ISIS has a lot of Chechen fighters, mostly associated with Doku Umarov and his "Caucasus Emirate"; indeed, one of the groups that united to become ISIS was founded by a group of Chechen separatist commanders. The aforementioned contractors pegged them as the best fighting force that ISIS currently possesses, due to both high morale and experience.

On the other hand, Russia has been kinda sorta reviving the "savage division" traditions of the Empire, specifically with Chechnya as a source of recruits. They were used in Ukraine (ironically, sometimes fighting against Chechen separatists who came to join the Ukrainian National Guard volunteer battalions), and now also in Syria. But they're usually not former anti- Russian insurgents from the _most recent_ war (the one that started in 1999). Many of them were separatists in the first war (1994-96), but switched sides in the second war, like the current Chechen leader Kadyrov.

<comment><USER23> Thanks.

OT: Where do you learn all this? I read a lot of foreign policy and I'm always interested in excellent new sources. The Jamestown Foundation provides in- depth coverage Russian and Caucuses issues like these, if long-winded a little partisan, but I haven't found much else.

<comment><USER25> I'm Russian, so it's easy to follow the local news and social media.

Also, I follow a variety of "interesting" people on LiveJournal. Among them are some separatist militia fighters from Donbass, so I get a scoop of their inner news, rumors and propaganda. These guys are actually surprisingly ready to share with most anyone who's willing to listen - they have a lot of broken expectations, and many are angry in a very loud way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't have anything to say about the geopolitical or moral importance of Russia hacking the US to influence elections.

But I do have something to say about the attribution here:

A very common sentiment on HN is that the US intelligence community has decided that Russia has a motive to hack the US, and spends money on offensive security, ergo "it was probably Russia".

That is not how attribution works. Officials (and the firms they hire) are working with vastly more specific fact patterns than the news stories about these incidents convey. They are matching Russian means, motive, and opportunity at a far more precise level of detail than is commonly reported.

The major attribution firms --- FireEye/Mandiant, Crowdstrike, &c --- have for years prior to these breaches been collecting huge volumes of information from a pretty significant fraction of the Global 2000, who deploy their tools as part of their anti-malware strategy. That's the entire idea behind Crowdstrike†: you deploy their agents, and they hoover up IOCs and malware samples from around the world and analyze them. These firms have been involved in thousands of compromises we've never heard of, and have staffed large teams of experts (both FireEye and Crowdstrike have gold-plated reputations in the infosec community) to analyze and develop signatures from that information.

The DNC compromise is analyzed in terms of IOCs --- network traces of command and control channels, captured backdoor and malware samples, vulnerabilities employed, IP addresses of staging servers --- and those IOCs are matched to previous compromises. When DHS says they're working with a "high degree of certainty" about who's behind the compromise, they're saying that they've matched the compromise to a set of IOCs --- _many of which are not public_ \--- that are tied to previous known Russian compromises.

That doesn't mean everyone involved here --- multiple departments of the US Government, the executive branch of the government at the very highest level, and several of the largest security firms in the US --- couldn't be lying. It could all be a conspiracy. If it was, it would be the largest conspiracy ever carried out by the US government. But I guess that could be what happened!

† _Crowdstrike, by the way, is run by a conservative Republican._

<comment><USER27> >That doesn't mean everyone involved here --- multiple departments of the US Government, the executive branch of the government at the very highest level, and several of the largest security firms in the US --- couldn't be lying. It could all be a conspiracy. If it was, it would be the largest conspiracy ever carried out by the US government. But I guess that could be what happened!

I don't think it's as simple as that. When the case for war against Iraq was made, "multiple departments of the US Government, the executive branch of the government at the very highest level, and several of the largest security firms in the US" all seemed to be in agreement that Iraq definitely had weapons of mass destruction.

Clearly, they did not, what happened is that certain facts were overstated and repeated and certain other facts were ignored or downplayed.

There is no reason to believe that this is any different because, again, there is a strong political gain for the current administration to have these facts be so.

I agree completely that Russia may well be behind the attacks but given the fact that the people making the announcement also have the most to gain from the announcement, I am happy to remain unconvinced until I see more evidence.

<comment><USER26> It's not simply the USG reporting the attribution, but also several of the most reputable forensics firms, independently.

In more depth, see also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Am I the only one who would like to see cold hard evidence for these claims? I want server logs, ip traces, intercepts, or some proof besides just "intelligence says".

<comment><USER29> You will never see it. The US never provides proof. Only "Intel sources say" and rumors.

<comment><USER11> > You will never see it. The US never provides proof. Only "Intel sources say" > and rumors.

That's not entirely true, though the only time the US Executive Branch will provide the backing for its intelligence conclusions is if it needs to in order to convince some other entity in order to motivate that entity to take action; the _public_ is rarely an entity which it must approach this way (and, when it must approach Congress or US Courts, there are procedures to keep intelligence material from the public, which are often, but not always, used; some information may come out this way, though), and occasionally the public will also receive some of the evidence incidentally to the US government presentation to some _other_ entity, like the UN Security Council.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If the problem is people getting access to voter databases, it's really much ado about nothing, since many of those databases are already public, and besides you can pay a data warehousing company a few bucks and get much more data about any American than what exists in any election database.

If the problem is actually the voting machines, then maybe we should go back to all paper ballots like many other western countries like Canada.

Funny how the proven, reliable and simple solutions are never proposed...

<comment><USER31> >If the problem is actually the voting machines, then maybe we should go back to all paper ballots like many other western countries like Canada.

Problems with paper ballots in the 2000 election are a big reason the US no longer trusts them. No one wants to go back to the days of scrutinizing hanging chads and indistinct pencil marks.

Electronic voting has obvious problems but at least you know what a vote is or isn't.

<comment><USER30> Ahh, right. A few old people misread those poorly designed ballots, therefore let's use a poorly secured system that is hackable by foreign governments.

Or, we could design the ballots to not be confusing?

It's funny how other western countries using paper ballots don't have these problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Press release (with the joint DHS and ODNI statement referenced in the article): [https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement- departme...](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department- homeland-security-and-office-director-national)

</comment><comment><USER23> A big question is why government stays on the sidelines of cybercrime (and espionage). They said something here, but it's not usual, and what have they done about it? They don't seem to feel responsible for protecting IT assets like they do for older infrastructure: If someone was blowing up pipelines, it would be shocking if the U.S. government was so passive about it.

The government needs to step forward and do its job of protecting citizens, including in cyberspace - hardly a minor consideration at this point. I've been thinking about it recently after reading this article:

[http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/10/04/risky-business-when- go...](http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/10/04/risky-business-when-governments- dont-attribute-state-sponsored-cyberattacks/)

</comment><comment><USER29> The US? Seriously is this some kind of joke? The same US that has been assassinating leaders and overthrowing dictators for over 100 years is accusing someone else of interfering with an election? That's really a sign of mental illness on the part of the US.

<comment><USER32> Quite the contrary. This is superficial sanity, planting necessary ideas into mass consciousness. You cannot touch China, they are important trading partners, despite _facts_ that chinese intelligence is writing files at US defence contractors at speed of hard drives there. You cannot touch Germany, otherwise this will jeopardise transatlantic treaties. Blame Russia, it cannot do anything, anyway.

<comment><USER29> Russia can do plenty. Like fuckup the US's overthrow of Assad so they can build their precious nat gas line through Syria that Assad won't allow. Russia put a stop to that. Now it's down to how much blood is the US willing to spill in order to ensure Europe gets free of Russia's natgas hold on them.

<comment><USER32> No one forces the EU to buy gas from Russia. Besides, the US successfully completed huge liquid gas terminal facility at its EU satellite - Lithuania, so there is an alternative supply since 2014.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't believe i'm read so many commenters here say that the government is lying that is Russia. Think about it why would Americans officials lie about this and its not just the US government (now) saying its Russia but independent security groups have been saying this too.

I know its hard to believe in post Snowden America that everything the government says is a lie but it just doesn't make sense for use to point the finger at another country for this.

Depending on the out come of this election Russia could be in a world of hurt.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not news that Russia is doing this. It is news that the government is officially accusing them of it. There are going to be geopolitical and diplomatic repercussions from this.

<comment><USER34> okay but but whom? geopolitical and diplomatic repercussions by Russians or Americans?

In case Americans... is there anything America can do to them to make them feel the heat? I mean you talking about the country that was in a deep poverty for decades but still praised and loved their dictator...

That mentality won't change.

<comment><USER16> If we're going to move toward open cyberwarfare, we could do a lot to their network infrastructure.

<comment><USER35> And they could do a lot with our power grid. Probably not a wise path to move down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> No Diebold statement? They're still widely used and just as hackable.

No need to sway the public opinion by releasing troves of party emails if you can just directly hack the vote itself!

</comment><comment><USER37> >"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities

Perhaps.

Russia and China have been "cyber attacking" my servers for years. Last server I set up for a friend I blocked both countries by IP range.

I can imagine because the intensity of what's going on with this election, it has drawn out a more concerted effort from your typical misanthrope probing servers.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Jason Healey, a senior research scholar on cyber issues at Columbia > University, said the Pentagon's Cyber Command should disrupt Russian hacking > operations. "Go after their command and control," he said. " > 'Counteroffensive' is the key word here."

Oh lovely- get back at them with their own medicine, normalizing a continuous cyberwar in nominal peacetime. Its great- as fun and lucrative as regular warfare, except without all those issues with _optics_ because no one understands all this cyberbusiness regardless. Want to be rich in ten years? Throw a pile of CS grads together to start up a cyberwarfare consulting company, and you can still carve out your slice of the new military-industrial complex.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there really anyone who isn't trying to influence the U.S. elections? Why single out Russia for criticism? President Obama himself is trying to sway voters to vote for Hillary Clinton. The New York Times recently released Donald Trumps's 1995 Tax returns in an attempt to influence voters to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump. Then just a few days ago, the Washington Post released a video of Trump's 2005 crude sexual comments which provoked outrage among the public and resulted in the plummeting of his poll numbers. All these media organizations are, in one way or the other, attempting to influence the U.S. elections. So why blame Russia when others are doing exactly the same thing?

</comment><comment><USER40> Although I'm a citizen and resident of the US, I can't help but smirk when government officials are outraged and shocked that another nation state is trying to influence our electoral process.

Question for someone more informed than I: With the Citizens United ruling, what's to stop another country from pumping money into US elections?

<comment><USER25> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is WaPo still a credible medium after their "no pardon for Snowden"?

Also, when will the US Oligarchy stop blaming everything on Russia. Sloppy server security? It's Russia. Private e-mail server used for government business? It's Russia.... Nearly 20 trillion dollar debt? It's Russia.

OK, US Oligarchy needs an enemy for a new war. A war that would hide the fact that this neoliberal system is about to hit the wall. A war that would fill the troves of the military industrial complex.

Says a "conspiracy theorist" George F. Kennan, former US ambassador to Moscow and distinguished Council on Foreign Relations member: "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military- industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy."

Good Night, and Good Luck.

<comment><USER42> >Is WaPo still a credible medium ...

No but notice how even otherwise highly intelligent Americans collapse under the spell of 3-lette-agency propsganda. Its amazing!

<comment><USER41> This is why I sympathise with regular US American citizens, they are equally a victim as the rest of the world. Their soldiers are not bringing "freedom, democracy and human rights" but death and destruction. And they themselves come back home - some dead, many destroyed. And for what?

Regarding US media being influenced by three-letter-agencies: Operation Mockingbird

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird)

is alive and well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What's the evidence?

Personally, I think the Russians were involved. But for consequences to follow, we as a culture need to be certain based the preponderance of the evidence.

</comment><comment><USER44> > The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian > Government directed the recent compromises

Strong claim. What kind of evidence would an investigator need to see to make such a claim against a foreign nation? Would it be different than what is needed to make a claim against an individual citizen?

I'm having a hard time taking this entire message seriously. It just feels like empty reassurance.

<comment><USER11> tptacek addresses this elsewhere in the thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663930)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Discussion of any topic that mentions Russia (everywhere, including HN) is, unfortunately, dominated by Russian propaganda trolls.

<comment><USER46> easy, hacker news should block IPs originating from Russia and China. they're mostly just state sponsored posters anyways

<comment><USER47> Please don't make baseless accusations like this on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is as credible and evidence based from reliable sources as the statements that Iraq had WMDs and was connected to 9/11.

</comment><comment><USER49> Joint DHS and ODNI Election Security Statement

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.scribblelive.com/2016/10/7/14...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.scribblelive.com/2016/10/7/1416970_3941564435a2d4e5-8e38-47c0-9c21-346a56b59865.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER50> What I don't get is how the Obama administration thinks it can point a finger at Russia and claim interference in the democratic process yet not look hypocritical for not also pointing the finger at Rep. Debbie Wasserman and claiming the same.

Do they realize how absurd their position sounds right now?

<comment><USER51> If you're familiar with the DNC leaks I have no idea how you could claim equivalence in good faith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Russia has a fairly well known "troll brigade" as well. Search a bit about Russia's army of Internet trolls and propagandists. It's interesting.

Of course I'm sure the USA does a fair bit of this stuff as well. Every major nation does propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER53> What sort of evidence do they have to back this? I've seen nothing discussed about that, anywhere.

The only thing they seem to go with is that Guccifer2.0 links to Russia.

To me this whole thing is based on nothing more than an educated guess.

<comment><USER11> > What sort of evidence do they have to back this? I've seen nothing discussed > about that, anywhere.

The attribution by CrowdStrike was discussed in the news (and on HN) previously. While the government may have additional evidence from intelligence sources beyond what CrowdStrike was looking at, it probably includes the same things at a minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> An even more interesting problem is how HN will deal with 55 Savushkina Street

</comment><comment><USER55> Do you blame them? Russia is only trying to protect themselves from gettimg dragged into unnecessary aggression and war with Trump as Commander.

</comment><comment><USER56> "However, officials said those attempts could not be directly linked to the Russian government."

Clearly this article is a hit job.

But why?

<comment><USER57> They're upping the accusations now for at least two reasons that are convenient. The growing conflict between the US and Russia in Syria and the embarrassingly weak, flailing campaign of Hillary Clinton.

<comment><USER16> I'm not remotely a fan of hillary clinton, but she's currently blowing out Donald Trump in the polls (538 currently has her as a 4-1 favorite to win)

<comment><USER58> Considering how much of a disaster Trump and his campaign has been, this is still pretty underwhelming that he was close to matching her 50-50 as much as 1-2 weeks ago.

<comment><USER59> Even if Trump is not being funded, influenced etc by Russia he's amateur at best. I almost compare Trump to a Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Not a great statesman and would create a terrible political environment and make major mistakes. :( It only takes one weak president and combined with a horrible congress and we're gonna have a bad 4-8 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> translate: US government diverts attention away from new wikileaks dump of clinton emails.

</comment><comment><USER61> I accuse the government, and the political parties, of gross incompetence.

</comment><comment><USER59> Trump reminds me of Kaiser Wilhelm.. Good luck America!

</comment><comment><USER62> Smaller countries are on the receiving end of advanced hacking for a long time.

This one is about some old private server...

<comment><USER16> I don't think it would be a major international incident or even be particularly unexpected for them to hack the rnc and dns and anything else they could get their hands on. In fact, they'd be failing at their jobs if they weren't trying their hardest to do that.

The problem is that they _released_ the data. And they are fairly blatantly attempting to tip the scales in an ongoing election. That's not something that the US can politely ignore. It threatens the entire political system of the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Да, мы единственно не смогли хакнуть трансгуманистов.

</comment><comment><USER63> They're trying to make sure Trump is the one so he brings down the country without Russia or other powers haha.

\- ignorant person speaking

</comment><comment><USER64> This is certainly one of the more peculiar incidents of late.

It's been my impression that the US and Russia conduct various sorts of covert mischief such as this, but it's usually under the radar.

"Hacking" an insecure email server configured by campaign volunteers or other non-technical people is not exactly what would qualify as a "state sponsored attack".

(edit: if you disagree please explain why rather than simply downvoting)

<comment><USER15> Actually this is a pretty clear sign of a state sponsored attack, most attacks including the ones that the US does are not technically sophisticated but they are executed near flawlessly with a very good operational methodology, the other aspect of state sponsored attacks is protection; even the criminal elements of the security/hacking community stays out of military and government networks usually unless they have a pretty strong patron they can run to, no one wants to experience rendition or a drone strike both of which are very real threats hackers that attack government networks face.

<comment><USER65> Really? Can you name one hacker targeted in a drone strike? I'm pretty sure that only happens in your mind.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.wsj.com/articles/hacker-killed-by-drone-was- secre...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/hacker-killed-by-drone-was-secret- weapon-1440718560)

<comment><USER65> Obviously ISIS hackers will get killed in drone strikes, that's a war. But nobody is going to drone strike a hacker in Russia, Germany, or the USA. Let's get real here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Battle of the InfiniBands, Part Two - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/04/13/the-battle-of-the-infinibands-part-two/ <comment><USER2> Whatever they say, Omni-Path isn't (compatible with) Infiniband just because it supports the Openfabrics interface, like some Ethernet technologies. Qlogic's Infinipath was, so you could mix Mellanox HCAs and Qlogic switches, for instance; I assume that also applies to Truscale, but I haven't used it.

DFT programs like VASP are likely dominated by time in mpi_alltoallv at scale, and probably depend on the implementation of that more than the fabric, assuming similar latencies. I don't know how/if that's helped by offloading; I (and a colleague at another site) couldn't make a previous generation of the support work properly and promises of help never materialized. Also, real usage may not reflect IMB-type mpi_alltoallv benchmarks. (VASP is a particularly unfortunate example, since the licence requires you to be a member of a specific research group, as opposed to general support staff or, as far as I could see when I read a copy, vendors.)

At least without the complication of offloading, according to [http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/](http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/) a few P2P metrics characterize the network well for simulating real MPI programs/libraries.</comment>


The Lizard, the Catacombs, and the Clock - <AUTHOR> http://brickmag.com/current/excerpt1.html

<comment><USER2> The article raises many more questions than it answers. Though I guess that's the idea.

Anyone want to write a book?

</comment><comment><USER3> "... to do interesting things without permission."

Brilliant real-world hacking.</comment>


Why Germany Lost World War II and Why the Allies Won? - <AUTHOR> https://en.historylapse.org/why-germany-lost-world-war-II-and-why-the-allies-won <comment><USER2> If you're interested in WWII history, check out Victor Davis Hanson's "The Second World Wars". It offers a fresh look at that era.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Ultra Secret by F.W. Winterbotham</comment>


Verisign: ICANN drawing attention to comment period distorted process - <AUTHOR> https://domainnamewire.com/2020/02/19/verisign-tries-to-discredit-icann-commenting-period-process/ <comment><USER2> > Verisign implies that Namecheap customers are domain investors, so comments > from Namecheap customers should be discounted

But using that logic Verisign are invested in the .com TLD so their comments should also be discounted. You can't have it both ways Verisign.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Verisign's letter suggests that domain name registrars and investors (or > "speculators," in its words) have "distorted and undermined the > multistakeholder process by"…wait for it…

> > Encouraging people to comment during the comment period.</comment>


GNUPanel 2.0 – Crowdfunding campaign details - <AUTHOR> http://wp.geeklab.com.ar/gl-en/2013/09/25/gnupanel-2-0-crowdfunding-campaign-details/ Next week we'll start the campaign that will end with GNUPanel's new version.
As we described in this special section the project will be focused on a brand new code, an optimized design including many users's suggestions, a plug-ins system for flexibility and an improved look and feel.
GNUPanel may finally become a GNU package right on time to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Richard Stallman's fantastic idea. Help us to make it happen! <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TJwrjxyf9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TJwrjxyf9g)</comment>


Opinion vs. Skill on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://richardwatson.co/opinion-vs.-skill-on-hacker-news.html <comment><USER2> While HN is also one of my most visited websites, I agree about the "opinion" articles. I have enough of an intuition now to spot them and not click through them, focusing more on news, technical articles, and releases of software.

For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not understand? Do you even write code? Humans judge this stuff based on accomplishments and reputation in real life so why not on the internet?

I only realized this after coming across these kinds of comments about fields I specialize in or have a lot of experience with, and seeing blatantly wrong comments being upvoted and affirmed by other comments. If it's like this for exporting I have experience with, it's probably the same for stuff I don't know. Upvotes and affirmed comments should not be taken as truth.

And in the end opinion doesn't really matter unless you have influence in a community. Otherwise nobody that matters will really listen. Write a longform blog or something more captivating rather than some sneaky comment on HN that people will forget about after a week. Same goes for this comment I guess ;)

<comment><USER3> > _For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? > What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get > upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why > should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not > understand?_

It's a discussion, you're supposed to evaluate the other's arguments and exchange ideas, knowledge and opinions about the subject, not a lecture where you're supposed to trust the other to educate you.

<comment><USER4> I would go farther and say that when credentialism creeps into a community, it's done.

That said I very much appreciate the genuine experts who post here, and hate seeing them driven away by disrespectful people.

HN walks the line between experience and openness better than any other community I know of. It's not perfect but it's still amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I've spent too much time on the other parts of the internet, but I kinda disagree with this:

> Very often, useful comments are crowded out by one-uppy point scorers and > the top half of a reasonable thread can be filled by long side-discussions > that can't be scrolled past fast enough. Vitriol abounds.

Compared to other discussion boards, I usually find HN threads are far more thoughtful and less antagonistic.

I mean, from the author's own example, compare the Brexit threads on HN[1] and Reddit[2]. The top comment on the HN thread is a thoughtful comment on why the EU is important and what the EU should aspire to be - whether you agree with the author or not, it's not overly charitable to say the author wasn't simply making a "one-uppy point scorer". The top comment on the Reddit thread is a joke about making a bet on Brexit.

There absolutely are HN threads full of vitriol and "one-uppy point scorers", but they're more rare - compared to, again, other parts of the internet. And yes, there are other online discussion boards that are even more thoughtful. Still, I don't think the characterization is entirely fair.

I guess my point is that the opinion threads can also often be very illuminative. The top thread on that HN Brexit post is actually a pretty interesting discussion about 18th century revolutions. Perhaps a bit basic to someone well-versed in modern western history, and certainly needs to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, but still interesting nonetheless.

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167)

2: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forec...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forecasts_uk_votes_to_leave_the_european_union/)

<comment><USER6> Perhaps if you are a developer. If you are anyone else, the comments can be pretty toxic. The amount of "managers are useless", "phds are useless", "designers are useless", and so on that I see here is extremely off putting. For some careers, like academia/phd, there are almost monthly slam fests with tons of toxic comments about how developers are so much smarter and better.

<comment><USER7> > For some careers, like academia/phd, there are almost monthly slam fests > with tons of toxic comments about how developers are so much smarter and > better.

That's quite the mischaracterization. Some of us happen to have research background and know very well how the phd daily grind goes. It's due to our personal experience and first-hand accounts of the whole academia/phd life and hardship that we do have and present negative opinion on the whole industry.

Just because opinions don't cast academia in a good light it doesn't mean they aren't accurate accounts of what academia life actually is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's true that there's some distinction between opinion based topics and skill based ones. However, I think the more important issue is that there are topics where people are more or less aware of their own ignorance, and topics where they are not.

Politics is a great example. Politics threads are typically uninformed. However, it's not that there are no facts involved, it's that people who don't know the facts won't let that stop them from aggressively commenting.[0] Of course, by facts, I don't mean things like "Democrats/Republicans are evil", but basic facts about what laws have been passed, how the supreme court works, etc.

This isn't a distinction that's about the topics, it's a distinction about people's attitude towards those topics. After all, questions about Java's GCs compared to Go's GC, or Android vs. iOS security are equally grounded in facts, but attract almost as much uninformed commentary.

[0] I don't want to be an elitist. There's plenty of good ways to comment on a subject you don't know about, to ask good questions, etc. It's the certainty of the uninformed that's a problem.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html)

<comment><USER8> I have mixed feelings about that essay. One point is exactly what I was trying to say, but I suspect the observation about identity is wrong. Many great discoveries have come from people who were powerfully attached to an ideal: to take an odd assortment, consider Hilbert, Keynes and Milton Friedman.

I suspect there's an availability bias. Consider a table:

        |                | Has Identity | No Identity |
        |</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>--+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-|
        | Thoughtful     | Insightful   | Insightful  |
        | Not Thoughtful | Obnoxious    | Silent      |

We confuse having an identity with being thoughtless because we see so many people who combine the two, not because their identity actually makes them less thoughtful.

Flat Earthers are an interesting example in this case. There wasn't an identity attached to it, it doesn't support some political or religious cause (maybe it's not become an identity, but it didn't start as one). It's just catnip for people who think they're skeptical and free-thinkers, but are actually just bad at reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER10> > _Look for high vote-to-comment ratios._

This is a pretty good metric for finding high quality threads (isn't a low ratio something the HN algorithm uses in weighting front page rank?). The only problem is that sometimes a great comment will, understandably, generate a lot of responses.

I wish there were a variant of the /bestcomments endpoint [0] that surfaced highly-voted comments within the last 12 hours. Not that days-old threads aren't worthwhile to read, it's just that they no longer have active participation.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

</comment><comment><USER11> > We don't want to be educated with every post or thread.

I completely disagree with this article. It sounds really elitist. Opinions are how we understand the world and the changing situations, complexities and nuances. They (may) help us refine our views and develop newer and/or better mental models that we can relate to and use elsewhere.

To state that topics/threads high on opinions are essentially worthless is a generalization taken too far.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ironically: Sounds like an opinion piece about how best to use HN if you are this specific person.

That's not snark. There's nothing wrong with writing something like this. But use of HN is not a scientific thesis and there are experts in the field of HN participation.

Cool if people want to use it as a jumping off point for talking about stuff, but ironic nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct! Both on opinion and it being for me. I'm not optimising for "HN participation", rather my own enjoyment of the site. The participation experts are exactly who I'm (sometimes) trying to avoid, since their motivation is to participate optimally, often for their own benefit.

There's no rule - some post daily and that's great for them. They also often drive the discussions and the "feel". Awesome, it's their watercooler. But there's another way to maximise enjoyment of HN, and my post is for those who might benefit from better signal/noise.

I still miss PG.

<comment><USER12> I actually meant to say there are _no_ experts in the field of HN participation. I accidentally dropped the _no_ and didn't notice it before the edit window closed.

On a different forum, the lead moderator retired, but then stuck around and de facto retained a small unpaid staff role. I think it has had a poisonous effect on the site.

It would be wonderful if pg could continue participation as just a member without it going weird and problematic places. But I don't think that's very realistic and I feel he did the right thing for the health of the forum.

Though I certainly understand why some people miss him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Opinion vs. Skill isn't limited to HN. It happens in the workplace, too. My opinion is that it might be impossible to avoid the echo chamber fallacy. Perhaps opinions are reinforced by social proof. My mind really starts to warp when I read back this comment. I'm calling out echo chambers by participating in my own. Trippy.

</comment><comment><USER14> Opinions are hugely undervalued nowadays.

<comment><USER15> I think they are highly overrated and underrated at the same time. I think that useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work, are extremely undervalued.

A lot of opinions aren't bought by experience though. Opinions on the best x, are largely useless in my eyes, and easy to come by. You'll see it in almost any HN discussion on a specific tech these days. I mean, when is the last time you saw a HN thread about JavaScript where half of it wasn't a debate on why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus?

I wouldn't call all of those opinions undervalued, because they have no real use and serve no purpose. X is typically terrible and unproductive, but it's also lovable and very productive. With almost everything there are pros and cons, and the only truly valuable opinions on anything are from people who make it work or crashed trying and then succeeded by doing something else.

I think this world needs a whole lot of "talk is cheap, show me the code", but once someone actually does the work, I think we should learn from their experience. I think HN has been great at sharing the useful opinions, at least so far.

This was a semi-useless opinion by the way.

<comment><USER14> > useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work

A kind of opinions from people who are far from being established experts in a particular area are called "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful too as well as opinions of people who are more of generalists and theorists than specialists and practics. Opinions from skilled experts may occasionally happen to be a way too biased.

> Opinions on the best x are largely useless... half of it wasn't a debate on > why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus?

If they uncover a lot about _why_ and do it concisely I would not consider them useless.

That's my opinion :-)

<comment><USER16> > "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful

The use of three words to hedge the usefulness aspect, somewhat contradicts the original assertion of opinions being undervalued.

I happen to agree that a fresh look, in the form of an opinion from a non- expert, can be extremely valuable, especially since I'm acutely aware that I'm certain to be biased on any topic where I have expertise from experience. However, that value seems to be proportional to how well-informed it is.

That is, if the opinion is based on insufficient knowledge (that can be obtained other than by experience, such as with a Web search), it can easily result in a subtle form of talking past each other that doesn't reveal itself until after a long back-and-forth. Sadly, that mostly just reveals fundamental gaps in knowledge, rather than any fresh perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> After clicking the "Richard Watson" site logo to see his homepage and getting a broken link, I've formed a negative opinion about his HTML skills.

Apart from that, people with skills have opinions, and vice versa. There's cross-over, noise, debate, and sparks. If all that causes someone to think about the problem, and get informed before firing back a response, then that's a good thing for discussion and learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the bug report! I was testing Jekyll and then Hugo as static site generators after moving from Ghost, and there might be a few issues in translation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it is more politics vs technical stuff. Political stuff is recognized by headlines 'bigcorp does X' kind of story, political news, huge number of comments, and lots of downvotes for me :-) technical content is usually very relevant, but lately the noise tends to drown out the techies, very sad development - if you ask me.

I would love some filter that just makes the political stories disappear.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm finding there are a lot fewer articles on the stuff i am an expert onto which I can contribute these days. Very little about low level systems programming, HFT, or Apple's software stack.

But even when I do write sonething technical here, it's only a matter of time until I get "corrected" by some pedantic try-hard trying to score internet points. Half the time they're wrong, half the time they miss the point of what I'm saying or trying to derail the conversation .

About 80% of the time these people have a username that's 'first initial-last name', so maybe they're trying to build some kind of name cred?

Anyways these days, the only time I comment is when I get baited into one of these opinion articles. Hnews is becoming more like Reddit to me.

Edit: why not comment instead of censoring with your down votes.

<comment><USER20> Ok, since you asked. You've explained why 100% of 'pedantic try-hards' who reply to your technical posts, shouldn't. _Now_ you want comments? You even have a conspiracy theory about their usernames. You were 'baited' into this article, now people who (I assume) don't like to read your whiny, abusive tone are 'censoring' you? I don't know why you ever comment on anything, since it sounds like, according to you, it's worse than a total waste of time. Except when you get to return the ill-feeling in a rant like that. Please do something you enjoy instead! Life's too short.

<comment><USER19> What makes you think the set is 100%? People can both be wrong and derail, like you did just now.

<comment><USER20> Rhetorical question: Can you really not see the irony of complaining about pedants who miss the point, then commenting like that on here?

Well, I've learnt my lesson about explaining downvotes - you just wanted someone to attack.

<comment><USER21> Please don't get personal in comments here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since we're throwing ideas out there, how about weekends vs. weekdays? ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't stand this tendency among software engineers to think that their life is made worse by contact with the judgements of others and that this kind of thing muddies the purity of some kind of monastic, apolitical life of software engineering. Everything is political and largely subjective and it's off- putting to me to see people who think they have a duty to avoid contact with this crucial part of life.

Most professions, hell most circumstances in life involve judgements. You can have disagreements as to how those judgements are handled, or find the nature of how conflict is handled to be overly contentious or disconnected from seeking resolution or for it to be fought over low stakes, and that's fine I don't disagree with any of that. But judgements are important, politics are important, and frankly I find it disgusting that places like hacker news foster this idea that our profession needs to be disconnected from these things.

</comment><comment><USER24> this one will count as an opinion thread

</comment><comment><USER25> I find that lobste.rs has a higher rate of "skill" articles. They also don't arbitrarily censor comments, which is nice.

<comment><USER26> They don't 'arbitrarily censor comments' on HN either. Whoever the 'they' are.

<comment><USER25> 'they' here refers to the mods. Should have clarified, I thought it was clear from the context.

<comment><USER26> The mods especially don't 'arbitrarily censor' comments.

<comment><USER25> Okay, I think they do. They've censored my comments many times.

<comment><USER20> You said 'arbitrarily censored'. Of course you don't think it was for a good reason. My comments are _never_ downvoted for any good reason. :-) In my limited experience, people develop that evil-conspiracy tone you have by assuming it's _what_ they said that wasn't wanted here, not _how_ they said it, which is usually the problem. I'd like to see examples of that. Well, _like_ is too strong. But provide evidence for your claim please, if you can. P.s. So _why_ on earth are you still here on a forum where your comments have been censored many times?!

<comment><USER25> I'm respectful and polite in this forum. I've been blocked simply for saying things with which some largish group of down voters don't agree. I am trying to leave this site but boredom always pulls me back :) That and I really do like to browse the posts and comment, engage with, and challenge people. Here's one such arbitrarily blocked comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643)

You can't read it but I screenshotted it for you. Dang calls me a troll simply for asking him to clarify and tells me to leave the site. "Legalistic Gambit of the troll," as if I'm trying to win some game. All I want is to be treated fairly on this site. It was very hurtful.

[https://ibb.co/hoSMHK](https://ibb.co/hoSMHK)

<comment><USER26> These comments were flagged by users and they can be seen. And you seem to want to engage in a 'debate' that is offtopic for the site. The mods are telling you you can't. Users, with their votes and flags, are telling you the same thing.

<comment><USER25> Those comments cannot be seen, they are marked as "[flagged]" if you browse with cookies off, at least. I disagree that it was off topic, it was directly related to the post I was replying to. I understand that people might disagree with the content of the post but that shouldn't be cause to censor it on a forum for civil discussion, should it?

<comment><USER26> It's not civil if the rules are repeatedly pointed out to you and you choose to disregard them. It's the opposite of civil.

The comments can be seen by logged-in users who have 'show dead' turned on. But we started at 'moderators censor comments'. Which they generally don't and haven't in your case. That's all.

<comment><USER25> Fair but they effectively did censor my comment if they didn't honor my request to unflag it. In any case, do you think that comment should have been censored? If so, why?

<comment><USER26> The flagging was done by users because the comment violates the site guidelines. The moderators didn't 'unflag' it because they they agreed with the users flagging the comment that it violates the site guidelines.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's new cryptocurrency promises a government-free solution to poverty - <AUTHOR> https://thebaffler.com/the-future-sucked/coins-of-no-nation-silverman <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"They've been here before. A few years ago, the company introduced its Free Basics plan, which provided a primitive, less data-intensive experience of the web by funneling all traffic through Facebook and a few approved apps, essentially occluding the difference between Facebook and the broader internet." ... "As the company said in a statement at the time, "Our goal with Free Basics is to bring more people online with an open, non-exclusive and free platform. While disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the internet and the opportunities it brings."</comment>


New law lets teens delete digital skeletons - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/New-law-lets-teens-delete-digital-skeletons-4837309.php <comment><USER2> Not sure how enforceable this will be, especially with services hosted outside the state/country. We have a big enough problem with keeping publicly accessible data out of websites like Spokeo/etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> OMG, did somebody make a comment about Obama?

</comment><comment><USER4> Good Luck with That!</comment>


The reason Bitcoin Crashed today - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/umRmL7b.png

<comment><USER2> Can someone explain how this image relates to the title?

<comment><USER3> Someone made lots of offers of 0.02 bitcoins for lower and lower price

<comment><USER4> This wouldn't drop the price. There were just too many transactions and their engine couldn't handle it. So:

-> Lag -> Panic -> Selling -> Price drop

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong - I don't know how Bitcoin works - but this shouldn't impact prices. At least, it wouldn't matter with currency trading. You can offer $.02 per Euro all day, and you'll just be ignored with no impact.

If this is not the case with Bitcoin, something is seriously wrong on a very basic head-smackingly obvious way.

<comment><USER4> Somebody had multiple bots, which were selling and buying at same time. Everyone ignored them, but they still boosted price up since "last trade" was always higher because of this micro transaction manipulations caused by bots.</comment></comment>


2 factor auth just isn't safe - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/is-your-2-factor-auth-based-on-a-pinky-swear-and-late-90s-it-security-859f50f25c8b <comment><USER2> I'd rewrite that title to say SMS based security isn't safe. This is by no means limited to 2 factor auth, there are still many many sites using SMS for "account recovery", which arguably is even worse (since 2fa should in theory also require your password).

But then SS7 is probably neither here nor there, since getting a new SIM with someone else's mobile number is likely to be way easier (and require less tech knowledge).

Go into your mobile network shop, ask to replace your faulty SIM, make up some sob story why didn't bring your ID. Did they say NO? Try the next shop.

Also the security around the terminals they use to switch SIMs in those shops are often very lax. Just last month I saw an example of both account sharing AND leaving the terminal unlocked with me next to it.</comment>


Show HN: Reliably Generate direct MP4 links for any YouTube Video - <AUTHOR> https://save.golf <comment><AUTHOR> This also works with curl: curl -L -o "video.mp4" "[https://save.golf/watch?v=N4UKsi979nM"](https://save.golf/watch?v=N4UKsi979nM")</comment>