

The Geeks on the Front Lines - cek994
http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-geeks-on-the-frontlines#i.12atsi31e13f80

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toddmorey
I'm mixed. Animation aside, some of the decorative formatting that has always
made for beautiful print pieces really seems to get in the way on the web. Not
sure I can explain why exactly. I was impressed by the effects (in a novelty,
how'd-they-pull-that-off sort of way), but I can tell you this: I didn't read
a word of the article. I was too busy playing with the animations. I think
it's fair to say the content was upstaged.

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jaredandrews
I have personally been enjoying articles laid out in this way. They are a
unique format that could not have worked in a pre-internet era. For years it
has felt like the magazines/old media/etc were just trying to bring an old
format to a new medium. Now some are starting to actually leverage the medium
to expand their old format.

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noir_lord
I really try to avoid criticising (it's the easiest route) but come on!, if
you are writing an article about hackers then a clean, clear semantically
valid document would have impressed me a lot more.

That just hurt my eyes and the gaudy crap distracts from the writing (which in
this instance was a blessed mercy).

Rolling Stone is better than this.

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toyg
"Fedora, an operating system used in China" ...seriously?

I had my doubts about this article, but after that line, it's really hard for
me to take it seriously.

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victorhn
Well, if at least one person uses Fedora in China, that statement is true.

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toyg
Yeah, but that's not how that sentence is parsed by somebody who doesn't know
what Fedora is.

"They're hacking Fedora, one of the most popular Operating Systems in the
enterprise world, created and developed mostly in the US"

vs

"They're hacking Fedora, an operating system used in China"

Both sentences are true, but the resulting spin is quite different. A person
who doesn't know anything about Fedora, next time he's offered to install
Fedora by his professional geek of choice, will associate it with Chinese
hackers. Great, isn't it?

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u2328
Impressive presentation, if you're trying to show off. Terrible otherwise, and
the content is just dumb. David Kushner has always struck me as one of those
superficial tech journalists who writes about it all the time, but largely
avoids attempting to explain the important technical details to the audience
well. He's either dumbing it down on purpose because he thinks his audience
will be easily confused, or he really has a meager understanding himself.
Regardless, I don't think he's doing his audience a service when he puts this
'Hackerz-are-l33t' theme on this article like he's submitting a screenplay to
Hollywood.

He's basically like the 'Smykowski' character from Office Space; trying to
justify his job ("I talk to the engineers so you don't have to!"), but in the
end, he's not really doing anything.

This is an important topic and it deserves to be treated much more seriously.
I feel embarrassed for Rolling Stone here. It's style over content and the
fancy animations are just compensating for an otherwise shallow article.

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cliveowen
Is there a printable, text-only version? The animation is distracting and my
CPU fan is spinning because of it.

~~~
sudont
No. There's no print stylesheet, and it breaks on readability. Otherwise, you
could try blocking JS on the page.

Best to copy-paste everything into your plaintext editor of choice. Bit
screwy, but it's better than the existing page.

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hcarvalhoalves
Couldn't read, the format sucks.

Sites are more worried about "wowing" than making the content readable
nowadays. There's a pressure from advertising, and the novelty factor gets
them a lot of exposition, mentions and pageviews, but that comes at the
expense of bounce rate.

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drewpc
Tattoos, hackers, "cyber warfare"...it's all the sensational stuff that I've
grown to expect in the news. While yes, offensive cyber operations/effects
stuff is the new military hotness, what about the real geeks on the front
lines? Where are the profiles of radio operators or network/system
administrators who are actually physically present on the front lines? Where
are the profiles of 22 year old Marines who are experts in RF propagation,
field expedient antennas, and satellite link budgeting in austere environments
while engaging in combat operations? What about their counterparts who operate
and defend enterprise scale, secure data network enclaves supporting 10,000+
users who demand real-time information to command and control forces in
battle?

It's not as sexy, but those are the real geeks on the front lines. They work
in grueling environments, far away from their families and deserve to be
recognized in their fields.

[http://www.dvidshub.net/news/91656/radio-operator-vital-
pers...](http://www.dvidshub.net/news/91656/radio-operator-vital-personal-
security-detachment)

[http://www.dvidshub.net/news/79421/data-marines-wire-
battali...](http://www.dvidshub.net/news/79421/data-marines-wire-battalion-
success-operation-eastern-storm)

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gbl08ma
Like others, I was having trouble focusing on the text of the article.
ViewText.org is down and I don't have any browser plugins for increasing
readability, so this made it a bit better for me:

[http://google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%...](http://google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Ffeature%2Fthe-
geeks-on-the-frontlines%23i.12atsi31e13f80)

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Glyptodon
I like how the "heart of America's cyberdefense" or whatever they called this
'NCCIC' looks like it runs Windows 2000... (yeah, yeah, probably just a theme,
but still, it's kind of funny. I have a hard time taking such things seriously
once I see they aren't using a *nix.)

~~~
u2328
It's just a bunch of bureaucrats in a room. They've got their Standard
Operating Procedures, and react accordingly. They're just cogs, and all the
real decisions come from the higher ups. All the hardware in that room is
procured and maintained through IT contractors and there is no software on
those machines that wasn't listed when they wrote those ~5 year long
contracts.

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mschuster91
Now, that is awesome JS work.

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angersock
It's really great whenever I get to see media folks actually using web tech to
display a story in an awesome, creative way, instead of just serving more
social media garbage.

We have hyper-media for all now, so we really should encourage using it.

~~~
anigbrowl
You seem to be in a minority on this; I thought it was technically impressive,
but the majority of people appear not to like it.

~~~
cek994
Or the people who comment are the ones who are pissed off, and the people who
think it's just kinda nice don't bother.

~~~
anigbrowl
Yes, but data you can't measure may as well not exist.

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BWStearns
tl;dr -- the article is lightweight technically but touches on important and
potentially flawed aspects of the government's relation to IT security
industry.

Formatting aside, the content is relatively important in a non-technical way.
It is detailing the manner in which the USG is experiencing some brain drain
due to both its policies and image. I wish the author had contextualized the
Miami conference a bit better (and the Fedora comment is hardly forgivable, I
hear Windows 8 is used in China too). There really is a need for some US cyber
policy but I fear that in its current incarnation that the government is not
well suited to bring on the kind of infosec talent that it needs. Yes there
may have been excesses (I think I saw one or two Snowden articles on HN) but
there are real attacks going on against both USG networks and those of
prominent US companies. With all the people on here who are US based
entrepreneurs (aspiring or succeeding) I think we want some level of
government protection against foreign government attacks, in the same manner
as brick and mortar businesses don't want tanks rolling through their walls.

I just hope that the US as a country consisting of both public and private
sector can reach a point where petty (rather outdated) regs don't prevent
willing top talent from helping the government while simultaneously ensuring
that US tech companies don't fall into being simple fronts for USG collection.

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StefanKarpinski
This is text with a few hyperlinks. It is exactly what HTML and the web were
originally intended for. Why can't people just put some damned text at a URL?
I'm too annoyed by the fact that I have to interact with this godawful,
pointless JavaScript nonsense to actually read this article. There's a time
and a place and this is not it.

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minor_nitwit
Good job by Mr. Motto. I especially liked the scroll to read intro. Most of
the comments on RS about the layout seem positive.

