
The Risks Digest - nz
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/
======
runciblespoon
"Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service AIVD have provided the FBI with
crucial information about Russian interference with the American elections."

I call total balony on this. Attempting to give it some credence by
accrediting the source to AIVD. How sad to see Risks Digest reduced to
repeating neocon waffle.

[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/30/54#subj1](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/30/54#subj1)

~~~
vajrabum
On the other hand at the risk of pointing out the obvious Risks Digest is
exactly that. It's a digest of postings on comp.risks which is open to the
world. And here is the link which is in English from a Dutch newspaper if
you'd like to engage with the specifics of the story.
[https://www.volkskrant.nl/tech/dutch-agencies-provide-
crucia...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/tech/dutch-agencies-provide-crucial-
intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~a4561913/)

~~~
runciblespoon
> if you'd like to engage with the specifics of the story ..

The main stream media arrogantly assumed The Presidency would be a shoe-in for
Clinton. Trump was good-for-ratings but no-one seriously expected him to
actually win. This Russians-influenced-the-election narrative is a ruse
thought up by the media to excuse their failure to present the correct
candidate to the American electorate.

What would be interesting to know is just who is leaking against both
'Hillary' and Trump and what their motives are. I suspect the leaks are coming
from factions in the Washington establishment and elements of the state
security apparatus. The Golden Shower dossier being a prime example, also
provided by a foreign intelligence organization. Incidentally, the same people
who provided evidence of Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass
destruction. This Russian hackers story and similar, part of a conspiracy to
get Trump deposed, nothing short of a palace coup prosecuted against an
elected President.

~~~
golergka
> The Golden Shower dossier

Wasn't it originally a 4chan invention?

~~~
perl4ever
The so called "dossier" was a series of memos produced for a company called
Fusion GPS that does things like opposition research, for both parties, using
ex-journalists and intelligence agents.

If you are so far out of the loop as to think it originated with 4chan, I'm
not sure where to start, but perhaps it might be edifying to read Glenn
Simpson's testimony to the Senate.

One place it's available is
[https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/read-
th...](https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/read-the-full-
transcript-of-glenn-simpsons-senate-testimony/2700/)

------
nz
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this thread took a political tone very
quickly, given that the recent issues of the digest contains reports and
speculations of a political nature. It makes sense that people's attention
would get consumed by these more recent speculations. After all the digest
covers risks that reside in the intersection between politics and technology,
meatspace and cyberspace.

However, I would like to try to gently nudge this thread more towards the
technological side of that intersection. A long time interest of mine has been
technological failure: things like nuclear reactor meltdowns, airplane
crashes, bridge collapses, and so forth.

For example, jhere is a link to a piece of the digest that covers exactly this
kind of stuff:

[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/1/1#subj4.1](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/1/1#subj4.1)

Sure, it's from '84, but as a software engineer I empathize with all of these
(mostly) software related failures, as I have to deal with similar failures on
a daily basis -- though thankfully they don't involve and fatalities or
injury.

Furthermore I find this digest to be very helpful as an archive of safety
related issues over a large span of the history of our field, than of current
risks which you can find trending on HN and reddit. I suspect the former is
much more instructive since most of that stuff happened before many of us were
born -- thus giving us the opportunity to learn from the past with an open
mind and free of bias. For example the first few years of the digest covered
the SDI which was apparently a hot topic among software engineers in those
days, while as present it is (to me) a vague and distant notion barely
perceptible -- like a fading transmission.

The digest is heavy with the residue of a rich history, and I hope that we (as
in humanity) can give a bit more focus to the past, since it will help us make
a bit more sense out of the present.

Other fun things:

John McCarthy of lisp fame was apparently a contributor back in the day:
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/1/7#subj1](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/1/7#subj1)

Richard Stallman made an appearance in 1990:
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/10/20#subj5](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/10/20#subj5)

As did Bernie Cosell (form Coders at Work by Siebel):
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/10/20#subj6](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/10/20#subj6)

And Leslie Lamport, (LaTeX, PAXOS, Turing Award):
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/10/44#subj1](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/10/44#subj1)

Julian Assange in 1995 talking about LoadDog (the wikileaks guy):
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17/59#subj9](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17/59#subj9)

Doug McIlroy in 2005 (of Unix pipes fame):
[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24/57#subj7](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24/57#subj7)

Anyway, hope software engineers on this board will find this historical
resource useful, and apologies if anyone got trolled by it.

