1. You say its not about competing against each other, but I can't fathom how else most people would interpret it. Imagine going to a panel interview, but then finding out the panel was everyone else competing against you for the job. It seems like you would actively be rewarding selfish behavior rather than group success. Any flaw or failure or mishap will immediately lead to finger pointing amongst candidates.
2. If the goal is to measure how well people work in a team, why not have them work with the team that's hiring them? The concept as proposed much less assesses someone's teamwork capability as it does assess someone's resilience against incredibly stressful hiring scenarios.
3. This doesn't sound like something someone could accomplish in a few hours, it sounds like a part-time job. This creates a seemingly biased system that will among many other things: Favor people who do your project while "on the clock" on their current job; Favor people who don't have kids or families or otherwise significant time commitments; Favor people with strong and sometimes overbearing personality traits who often gravitate toward group leader roles.
4. This sounds like a long effort for a hiring process, which can already be too long for some people. Unless the role is someone's dream job, or the compensation measures are bar none, you're going to have to provide significant benefits over your competition to keep candidates engaged, otherwise they'll just seek employment elsewhere that has the same pay, benefits, and role, minus this "trial by combat" hiring process.
5. Even with two groups of 3 candidates each, that's six people ("complete strangers") who are going to need oversight, management, and support to get anything remotely recognizable as a product delivered. How many managers or team leads are willing to take that on in addition to their normal work? How capable are your recruiters/HR people in actually supporting a robust service like this? I suspect the answer to either of those is not promising for most companies.
6. This is the kind of thing you do with your final candidate to assess all the things you're seeking to review, but doing this with a group of candidates all mashed together "thunderdome" style sounds cruel and unusual to me. Overall what you've pitched is an intern program, and its great for that, but I can't see this being functional in a hiring scenario, and I think you may run into legal issues unless you make people sign a bunch of weird documents before they even get a job offer, which could further dismay potential quality candidates.
This would, however, make a great reality show; 4/5 stars, would watch on Hulu.
In my honest opinion, what you're really looking for is a "hackathon" model with hiring capabilities built in.
Considering the FBI recently foiled a plot by a group who was planning to "take out" parts of the energy grid, it seems likely from my experience that this is another set of people executing a similar plan targeting telecoms. I imagine there is a high probability of more incidents like this happening between now and the inauguration, meant to target various infrastructure and "big government" components throughout the country. This attack screams anti-government militia with it's technique, and we will see in the following days online chats emerging with all the planning details that will likely include someone that had some degree of "insider information" about the ATT facility.
I saw a bunch of headlines recently that said the FBI had decrypted one of the popular secure messaging apps (telegram or signal maybe?), which, bizarrely enough, fits my narrative perfectly. Though I saw other headlines stating that was incorrect reporting.
You probably saw the headlines about Cellebrite claiming to have "signal decryption" capabilities, which they did, provided they had the device in hand and unlocked
The company claiming to have broken Signal was simply pulling the database of messages off of an unlocked phone. It’s definitely not a hack and the blog post has since been heavily retracted.
I think it’s premature to speculate about motive, aside from the obvious part about targeting telecoms infra rather than people. For instance, this might also potentially disable security/alarm systems for a heist, or perhaps it was motivated by some 5G conspiracy theory.
Although there is more overlap between the anti-government types and lefties than they would both like to admit, we don't really have a libertarian sect beyond a vague correlation with thatcherism (But even then, outright thatcherism is still a think for the wonks - having any political ideology at all is depressingly rare)
Here in the colonies, most of the left regards libertarians as right-wing (and a good chunk of the right considers them to be left-wing).
It's illustrative of why simplistic right/left labeling is at best useless. You have to evaluate individuals - and media orgs - at a much more granular level. At minimum, three dimensions - natsec/defense, economics, social.
I'm not sure if it's only anti government militia. Another possibility could be a heist/digital raid and that this bombing was there to prevent offsite backups of a secure data facility.
Nonetheless this seems too coordinated and well executed to be some random hate group, so I agree with you there. Especially with the evacuation messages.
Anybody know if e.g. the Nexus group or similar SSAE data centers had some issues?
I use the word to mean provocative/inflammatory comments that don't contain enough information to outweigh the provocation. Such comments tend to lead to flamewars.
Definitions aside, please don't post any more comments like that. We want substantive, thoughtful conversation on HN. Comments like "racist racist racist Fascist racist" are obviously not acceptable, quite apart from ascii art (though what you did with that was also not cool, and you did it at least three times).
Please don't post any more unsubstantive comments like these either:
Could you please knock it off? Your comments on this post are designed only to start flamewars. That sort of thing is frowned upon here. Since one of your comments is about what’s acceptable on HN, then either you know better and are doing it anyway, which is in poor taste, or you don’t know better and therefore shouldn’t be lecturing people about what’s acceptable here. Either by way of refresher or introduction, here are the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yep metcalf is why I'm making the leaps here. Also because metcalf is only one of dozens of similar events that occured throughout the US in the past 8-10 years or so, all similarly targeting infrastructure and energy companies, most of which remain unsolved today.
First, this isn't an analysis as much as it is pointless speculation on a Y Combinator message board.
I already listed some things that stood out to me in another comment.
I call out the inauguration because it's literally about to happen? Its the next the largest event in American politics on the calendar. And obviously my assumptions that this is tied to anti government efforts means those involved would likely be stirred up by whatever is currently happening in politics. Everyone's bias creeps into everything they do. Neither of us are immune to that. So calling it out here in such a uselessly rhetorical manner isn't some logical fallacy flag, it's a derailment of the discussion. I'm not even sure what bias you're accusing me of, I guess leftist politics?
What we're seeing is a "stochastic insurgency" where loosely affiliated groups and individuals conceive, plan and execute infrastructure attacks and targeted assassinations. Relatively little operational coordination; but lots of online showing support and post-crime support.
I hope all congressional representatives and local government officials are reviewing their safety plans.
I hope all congressional representatives and local government officials are reviewing their safety plans
I know I likely don't have to tell this to the experts out there, but it might first be advisable to have your counter terrorism guys review "all congressional representatives and local government officials". No one minds fighting a war, at the same time, no one wants to charge out of a foxhole and be shot in the back.
Recently there was the attempt to kidnap the Michigan's governor and the cell that was planning an attack on a power plant.
Both stopped by intelligence services, but that doesn't stop them being data points for people being extremists.
Not saying there is a guarantee this was people with the same objectives, but it seems like a plausible theory. I wouldn't make strong assertions as though it was fact, but I also wouldn't act like there hasn't been a trend recently.
I wonder what other crimes have stochastic forms... could violent video games be stochastic murder, if among the thousands of players there is one disturbed person who might be inspired by depictions of violence to act violently? Could songs glorifying violent lifestyles also be called stochastic crime? Folk songs glorifying cartels come to mind. If an unrealistic war movie inspires teenagers to join the army, might the producers of that movie have some share of the blame for the actions undertaken by that army?
Where is the line drawn between stochastic crimes and free speech?
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "stochastic forms"? The meaning and usage of the word that I am familiar with don't seem to fit here, so I don't think I'm getting your meaning. Thanks
> A derivation of Dr Woo's stochastic terrorism model was proffered by an anonymous blogger posting on Daily Kos in 2011 to describe public speech that can be expected to incite terrorism without a direct organizational link between the inciter and the perpetrator.[31][32] The term "stochastic" is used in this instance to describe the random, probabilistic nature of its effect: whether or not an attack actually takes place. And, although the actual perpetrator of a planned attack and its timing is not under the control of the stochastic terrorist, their actions nevertheless serve to increase the probability that a terrorist attack will occur.[33] The stochastic terrorist in this context does not direct the actions of any particular individual or members of a group. Rather, the stochastic terrorist gives voice to a specific ideology via mass media with the aim of optimizing its dissemination.[33]
So if 'stochastic terrorism' is speech that will probabilistically inspire acts of violence when it reaches a large number of people, why can't this be generalized to crimes other than terrorism? If the (now banned) subreddit r/shoplifting publishes messages glorifying shoplifting to a large number of people, it will likely inspire some portion of those exposed to commit these crimes themselves. Does that make the subreddit a form of 'stochastic theft'?
Purely my opinion and speculation here, but I'd say the things that stick out to me are the timing and avoidance of random casualties for one. This is a hallmark used by the IRA and the ETA in Spain to inflict damage upon the government without damaging the people, so to speak. The use of an RV also stands out to me, I don't recall many VBIEDs associated with foreign terrorists using that type of vehicle in the US, while I do recall RVs being a common tool in militia groups for movement, travel, storage, etc. Some other things stuck out to me watching videos of the explosion, but it's hard to say anything definitive until more evidence is released.
What would you consider the IRA to be in lieu of anti-government?
I don't think I said the IRA were a militia, I drew a conclusion that this incident, which I speculate as being tied to anti government militia groups in the US, shares similarities with other destructive anti government groups seen in Ireland and Spain. I don't think I said those groups were militia groups specifically, and I don't think the comparison is such a stretch since there are other commenters making the exact same leap to the IRA.
My contradictory wording is likely to be a subconscious defense mechanism of sharing my opinion on the internet. I have not claimed any specific knowledge or authority over this event or even in defense of my own speculation here. In full transparency, the only reason I posted was because people were going all in on the "heist" theory, which I find ridiculous.
If anything, this attack reminded me of the Weather Underground bombings in the 70s, which were often prefaced by evacuation warnings and targeted infrastructure rather than people. If I had to take a guess though, I'd go with a genuinely mentally ill person attempting to take out the 5G "mind control rays" or whatever, particularly given the potential presence of human remains found at the scene.
I read that story you mentioned about the energy grid plot, but it seems like bizarrely pathetic larping that was stopped before any substantive action was taken [0]. One part of the article I couldn't help but laugh at:
> The affidavit says the Ohio teen put Nazi flags in his room, but his mother told him to take them down.
Yea when I first saw the coverage my immediate assumption was a crazy anti-5g person. But reading accounts of the events leading up to the explosion made it sound too well executed for that in my mind. Obviously anyone who does this, regardless of motive, is mentally ill in some capacity.
> This attack screams anti-government militia with it's technique
The target and the means (RV stuffed with explosives) would sort of fit the pattern. Broadcasting an advance warning would be rather atypical for US right wing (or islamic, for that matter) terrorists, though, and rigging up a speaker that actually works would stretch the technical abilities of a typical US militia group.
The groups who did operate that way (weather people, IRA, RAF, etc) are not presently active in the US (unless some snowbird weather people decided to come out of retirement).
If the rumors of this being a suicide bombing pan out, a single disgruntled person with some technical skill probably would have the financial and technical means to carry this out, and a company like AT&T probably enrages thousands of technical people a year for various reasons — power laws would suggest that occasionally one of them might become enraged to the point of terrorism.
Or, for wilder speculation, maybe some foreign state level actor has an interest in causing extra chaos? With leadership of various security services in near constant turmoil, and new appointees being installed primarily with partisan domestic objectives, now is as good a time to carry out such an act as any.
It's probably best not to jump to conclusions, and be wary of any authorities looking to take this incident as a pretext to expand any of their ample existing powers.
16-20 cases handled by the NSF IG's office "regarding the disclosure of foreign ties" since 2018. "They were considered rule violations, but not criminal activity."
Separately, an undisclosed number of criminal cases were referred to the FBI.
Additionally, in the past two months, "seven universities have also contacted the NSF directly with information on faculty who may have violated rules." This represents another number of undisclosed potential cases. All this comes from "the agency’s first chief of research security strategy and policy," who started the job in March. So this clearly a new problem they're still working to fully grasp.
The NIH, which is a separate entity, stated they'd learned of "150 cases in the past 12 months,” according to their head of extramural research. The NIH has been conducting "an ongoing probe that has swept up 399 scientists since NIH received the first allegation in June 2016." [1]
That 93% mentioned in the original article includes 189 scientists investigated by the NIH, at least 54 of whom have been fired or resigned. The 189 scientists represent "285 active grants" totaling "$164 million." It was also reported that "cases involving the alleged theft of intellectual property or economic espionage, he says, are referred to either the inspector general for NIH’s parent body, the Department of Health and Human Services, or to the Department of Justice (DOJ)." So those cases are likely not included in these stats. Additionally, "Of the 189 scientists flagged in its letters to institutions, 133 of them (70%) failed to disclose a grant from a foreign entity, and 102 failed to disclose their participation in a foreign talent recruitment program, such as China’s Thousand Talents Program. "[2]
It also seems like you're discounting the value, purpose, nature, and impact of the research at play within these incidents, much of which is likely considered critical to the U.S. government. Murder is probably the least likely form of crime to occur where you live, but that doesn't make it a trivial issue. The driver across all of this is the continued perceived power of the US government in its technological supremacy in science and defense. China is fast on our heels, and any opportunity they have to "leap frog" research and development, as was seen with the J-31 Fighter Jet made by China [3], gives a perceived "frenemy" a significant edge that U.S leadership would consider a significant and detrimental risk to American power, politics, and foreign policy.
According to the DOJ press release from January, "under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT paid Lieber $50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT." [1]
I suspect they had evidence to indicate he was paid, but couldn't produce specific financial records to prove it without a doubt. In cases like this, the FBI typically goes for the jugular by pursuing espionage charges. This can be difficult because it often requires concrete evidence of financial gain from the foreign entity explicitly for the information provided or actions taken. The mere appearance of financial gain is not enough, they'd want to see the literal check stubs and account statements.
There are so many tools like this popping up, I just wish the creators in this space realized the gap in local implementation. I've worked on numerous teams that would benefit from this type of simplified knowledge management and linking, but having it all stored on someone else's server is a hard pass for the security teams I've been on.
Like some others I'm a little skeptical of the budget argument. A lot of the equipment that one would typically see employed for a protest or riot response (riot gear, crowd control weapons, armored vehicles) are often obtained via funding from federal Homeland Security and DOJ grants. Hitting the local city/county budget wont impact the militarization argument, and with a president like Trump, I can easily see an increase in federal grants swooping in to offset that, at least partially.
My second concern is that pay for police is often considered not great. Hitting the city/county budget will likely impact salaries, pay increases, health care benefits, vehicle maintenance, and many other areas. Sadly the fastest thing to get cut from municipal agencies is often training, so I'm skeptical we can "defund" the police while simultaneously adding additional training requirements around mental health, de-escalation, etc.
I'm not inherently against the defund argument, particularly when it involves shifting those funds toward more community services that would reduce crime and poverty anyways. It just seems like the problem has less to do with the amount of money police departments actually have and more to do with a lack of oversight on how they're spending it.
Just so we all have the facts straight - police militarization was also happening during Obama (not sure about bush or clinton). This isn’t new. So much spare military equipment from Iraq war with no where to go.
Yea 100% true, I didn't think I suggested otherwise but appreciate the clarification. I only mentioned Trump because he is 1. the current president, and 2. seems to support militarization of police. To me this puts him in an ideal spot to directly rebuke the desired impacts of defunding since the departments could just get their money from UASI (Urban Area Security Initiative) DHS grants, that I'm assuming Trump could get funded with at least some ease.
Question: Wouldn’t funding be congress rather than a president?
In regards to funding, every president seems to have been for it. Obama may not have been verbal about it, but certainly “funded” it:
A lot of statements and theories about these camera's from all sorts of directions, but they're just pole cams. LEA's have been using pole cams since before I was born (I'm 34). I worked in law enforcement as an analyst and spent some time staring at pole cams that were setup to surveil known drug dealers or criminal gang members. To do one correctly (i.e. legally) you typically need a warrant or a court order, but it can vary I guess based on jurisdiction. They're often deployed as an alternative to human surveillance efforts. They're called pole cams because, well, they get thrown up on telephone poles usually, to take advantage of the power source and ease of view. The surprising part of this isn't the cameras, its the fact that these are wide open on the internet. But honestly police are not IT people, and they often have officers or agents that work specifically as "surveillance techs" who are not IT people either.
I imagine this will draw a ton of ire about privacy and such, and I generally agree, but from my limited experience with them, they aren't wide spread, they're typically temporary, and they're usually purged except for the parts that are relevant to the investigation. These cams appear to be the exception, not the norm. If I saw a cam was sitting on an openly accessible server like this I would have filed a complaint with the agency and the OAG. I don't live in a state where any of the ones listed on Reddit are in, but I would encourage people who do live in a state with one of these cams to notify your OAG about it.
It's one thing for LAPD to throw up a camera that looks in your windows with a warrant (not convinced they have one, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt).
It's another thing for LAPD to throw up a camera that looks in your windows AND LEAVE IT UNSECURED ON THE INTERNET.
Mistakes in areas generally off limits to regular folks seem more outrageous because LEOs are trusted with powers of surveillance and lethal enforcement of the law.
Totally agree, which is why I recommended people contact their local Attorney's General if they live in a state or city where one of these are located.
If they are, or can be steered to, look in a window, that’s one thing. But if they can only see the public street, then they should be unsecured, for the convenience of the public. I can use them to check traffic, or see if the bus is coming.
Even more convenient. And when the law enforcement purpose needs them to be fixed on a certain spot, then turn off public access until the investigation is over.
I had one before that, asking about all member data from a darknet list. It seemed logical that select * from members would be the answer based, but I couldn't get it to accept no matter how many times I tried. Kept saying failed to fetch after run. I closed and reopened the browser, tried again, and it worked on the first attempt.
I've never heard this argument before. Generally China steals IP because it's faster and cheaper to build something when you can skip years or decades of R&D. I have trouble swallowing the "shared for the good of all" argument because I can't think of any instances where they actually do that. Instead it appears they just use stolen IP to fast track localized versions of things, or offer competitive products that undercut western prices.
China has for many years been relegated to the role of cheap laborious manufacturing for other countries, only to be stuck buying back the same things they helped build. Much of their IP theft supports plans to move away from that model and toward more localized advanced manufacturing and production. See the "Made in China 2025" plan for a literal blueprint of all the areas they plan on bolstering their economy, and you'll realize they overlap with IP theft instances.
1. You say its not about competing against each other, but I can't fathom how else most people would interpret it. Imagine going to a panel interview, but then finding out the panel was everyone else competing against you for the job. It seems like you would actively be rewarding selfish behavior rather than group success. Any flaw or failure or mishap will immediately lead to finger pointing amongst candidates.
2. If the goal is to measure how well people work in a team, why not have them work with the team that's hiring them? The concept as proposed much less assesses someone's teamwork capability as it does assess someone's resilience against incredibly stressful hiring scenarios.
3. This doesn't sound like something someone could accomplish in a few hours, it sounds like a part-time job. This creates a seemingly biased system that will among many other things: Favor people who do your project while "on the clock" on their current job; Favor people who don't have kids or families or otherwise significant time commitments; Favor people with strong and sometimes overbearing personality traits who often gravitate toward group leader roles.
4. This sounds like a long effort for a hiring process, which can already be too long for some people. Unless the role is someone's dream job, or the compensation measures are bar none, you're going to have to provide significant benefits over your competition to keep candidates engaged, otherwise they'll just seek employment elsewhere that has the same pay, benefits, and role, minus this "trial by combat" hiring process.
5. Even with two groups of 3 candidates each, that's six people ("complete strangers") who are going to need oversight, management, and support to get anything remotely recognizable as a product delivered. How many managers or team leads are willing to take that on in addition to their normal work? How capable are your recruiters/HR people in actually supporting a robust service like this? I suspect the answer to either of those is not promising for most companies.
6. This is the kind of thing you do with your final candidate to assess all the things you're seeking to review, but doing this with a group of candidates all mashed together "thunderdome" style sounds cruel and unusual to me. Overall what you've pitched is an intern program, and its great for that, but I can't see this being functional in a hiring scenario, and I think you may run into legal issues unless you make people sign a bunch of weird documents before they even get a job offer, which could further dismay potential quality candidates.
This would, however, make a great reality show; 4/5 stars, would watch on Hulu.
In my honest opinion, what you're really looking for is a "hackathon" model with hiring capabilities built in.