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It's pretty fascinating to read the Shadow Broker's posts. They have to write something, since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding Americ

It's pretty fascinating to read the Shadow Broker's posts. They have to write something, since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable." So they have to come up with all sorts of contrived reasons about why they're doing this, complete with broken english to fool stylometry detection that walks the fine line between being believable and preposterous. Someone spent a lot of work getting it to look so terrible.

YooLi 10y ago
Why are you so certain they are Russian?
- snowpanda 10y ago
  It's the popular thing to assume these days. It's also very insulting to Russian people in my opinion. But I guess it's ok to be prejudice towards some group of people but not others.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Russia uses online trolling as a tool. It's widely documented. This use of trolling leaves Russia open to accusations even when they're not involved. For a well documented case: http://www.stratcomcoe.org/internet-trolling-hybrid-warfare-tool-case-latvia-0 http://www.stratcomcoe.org/internet-trolling-hybrid-warfare-...
    - paradite 10y ago
      Widely documented by "The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence", the most obvious enemy of Russia? Human rights violations in the U.S. are also well documented by China: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/26/china-issues-report-on-terrible-u-s-human-rights-record/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/26/china-issues-r...
      - doktrin 10y ago
        The US does legitimately have an imperfect human rights track record, and most Americans who follow the news would agree (while at the same time being aware of China's own hypocrisy in this matter) Likewise, Russia has a well documented history of sponsoring online propaganda campaigns, and most people who aren't delusional or paid shills would agree. Two negative things about two different countries can in fact both be based in truth. Weird.
        zigzigzag 10y ago
        paradite is saying it's not well documented. It's poorly documented by people highly incentivised to lie. But hey, if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice.
        doktrin 10y ago
        > poorly documented Uh huh https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino https://themoscowtimes.com/news/st-petersburg-troll-factory-attacked-with-molotov-cocktails-55900 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/st-petersburg-troll-factory-... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-... https://www.inopressa.ru/article/03Jun2014/buzzfeed/web_rus.html https://www.inopressa.ru/article/03Jun2014/buzzfeed/web_rus.... https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitter-bots/ https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte... > if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice. Not true, but it would definitely take more than that hand-wavy uncertainty yarn you're trying to spin
        seppin 10y ago
        I honestly think HN is the target of some of these trolls as well.
    - rev 10y ago
      Well documented analysis of a corpus of comments on some Latvian sites, yes. Anything in 100+ pages serving as a proof of Kremlin connections with the "hybrid trolls" (gotta love the newspeak)? Not so much. I don't know whether Russians are xenophobic aggressive bastards or knights in shining armor exposing the wrongdoings of others, it's just that claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated.
      - doktrin 10y ago
        > claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated. What? gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.
        rev 10y ago
        Alacritous state actors more nimble at trolling than 4chan? You decide, I don't care. My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved - if you read into "Trolls from Olgino" reports carefully. US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" [0]. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/filling-americas-language-education-potholes/392876/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/fillin...
        doktrin 10y ago
        > My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved Disagree. There's no such thing as perfect certainty, but the only real question about Russian troll sponsorship is one of scale. https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitter-bots/ https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte... > US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" This is an interesting observation, but I think you either underestimate American resources, or overestimate the logistics of online influence manipulation campaigns. For illustration : there are about 1m fluent Russian speakers in the US, and about 4m fluent English speakers in Russia. Sure, it's a bigger talent pool : but both countries could rope in bilingual cyber propagandists by the thousands if they felt so inclined.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      > Russia uses online trolling as a tool. So does JTRIG[1][2], and probably many other groups as well. Russia isn't the only suspect for this kind trolling. [1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ [2] https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog/ https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog/
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    Honestly I think appeals to emotion like this have no place in dispassionate conversations about international espionage.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    This is a discussion about the Russian government, it doesn't really have much to do with Russian people in general.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      That sentence is correct however you read it out.
      - noobermin 10y ago
        It is "discrimination" to be suspicious of state actors? Was Snowden performing discrimination in exposing the NSA's spying?
        M_Grey 10y ago
        Did you reply to the correct person? I never said anything about discrimination, nor did the person I was replying to.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        Prejudice and discrimination are close enough to synonyms. You shouldn't be confused by the word swap.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        ...But neither of us said Prejudice either!
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        "It's the popular thing to assume these days. It's also very insulting to Russian people in my opinion. But I guess it's ok to be prejudice towards some group of people but not others." Is that not the comment you were calling correct? That's what "the person [you] replied to" was talking about, that use of the word prejudice.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  FWIW Snowden speculates "Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility. Here's why that is significant" - https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514891813945344 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514891813945344
  - doktrin 10y ago
    That 13-point tweet series paints a surprisingly plausible picture. I'm looking forward to getting the full story in about 20 years time.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      We'll be very lucky if in 20 years, the world is still so free and functional as it is now... and I'm not trying to talk up the state of the world today.
      - doktrin 10y ago
        I try to remain optimistic, because allows me to continue being largely complacent with and complicit in the slow decline of free and civil society. Slightly tongue in cheek, but only slightly.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    It's weird, though. Sure, it could be some kind of tit-for-tat thing, but I wonder more about 3rd party 'allies' in the middle east who have more to gain by pitting the US against Russia. Then again, I'm sure that there are enough people and intelligence services in play to make everything confusing.
revelation 10y ago
It's mindless drivel. The only thing you are reading is a mirror of your own preconceptions.
roywiggins 10y ago
Alternatively, they're someone else trying to look as if they're Russian-affiliated when they're not. "I work for Russia" would be unbelievable, so they sidle around trying to look suspiciously Russian without saying so.
throwaway71958 10y ago
As a Russian myself, I can tell you with certainty that there are mistakes in that text that a Russian ESL speaker would never make, and verb tenses are a bit too good for an unskilled speaker. Due to the combination of these two factors, I bet this was written by a native English speaker who thinks he/she knows the mistakes a Russian would make. They're wrong.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- doktrin 10y ago
  Just seems like general obfuscation to me. It would be very weird for anyone to make assumptions about their identity based on broken english.
  - mootothemax 10y ago
    While I get your wider point, I find the different types of mistakes that ESL'ers with different mother tongues make absolutely fascinating. I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles, people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons. When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in English - dear god, so much about my native tongue that I had no idea about, and yet made particular nationality error combinations really stand out. It's crazy fun. Edit: and I love my eldest's progress with English. While she's basically a bilingual preschooler, she tends to speak English with polish word order: I like cars red. Her natural instinct is to also use the polish rules for nouns when choosing he/she/it. It's an absolutely fascinating process I feel privileged to observe.
    - Pyxl101 10y ago
      > I like cars red Interestingly, that word order is also valid English, though it has a slightly different meaning than "I like red cars". Example: "I like [my] soup warm". "I like soup warm, but you can eat it cold and left over if you want." "I like having soup warm" "I like my cookies freshly baked" "I like men muscular and toned" "I like my women blonde, so you can go for the brunette" "I like cars red" doesn't quite work as well but doesn't seem wrong. Add a little context and it seems more normal. "As a buyer of many sports cars, I like my cars red, even despite the speeding tickets I get". Perhaps a linguist could explain how this phrasing works. (That said, of course I advocate teaching her to speak fluently and to use that word order only when she intends its subtlety of meaning.)
scythe 10y ago
I think that any agency with the capability to break into the NSA has also the capability to hire a proofreader. That is, any mistakes left in the documents are there intentionally.
- doktrin 10y ago
  This thread is slowly devolving into the linguistics equivalent of the poison scene in the Princess Bride : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL4c9gCRSKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL4c9gCRSKY
tyingq 10y ago
They went even harder at it in an earlier medium post: "TheShadowBrokers is having special trick or treat for Amerikanskis tonight." https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/message-5-trick-or-treat-e43f946f93e6 https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/message-5-trick-or-treat-... I suppose though, that "Amerikanski" might be used outside Russia. Serbia, Bulgaria? Misdirection seems more likely though.
- rukuu001 10y ago
  > is having special trick or treat for Amerikanskis tonight Sounds like a villian from a 60's Bond flick.
  - ConroyBumpus 10y ago
    It's way funnier if you read it in the voice of Boris Badenov (of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame).
- mladenkovacevic 10y ago
  Amerikanski is used in those languages to indicate ownership (eg. This is an American car) so to someone of slavic speaking origin this would be wrong (they would've said Amerikanci to indicate plural). But even aside from that, this honestly sounds so put on. Even the worst english speakers I know from eastern Europe know that you add an "s" to form plural. We all take English from elementary school and nobody would make that mistake, not to mention that it's a mistake even in a slavic language. A much more common mistake you will find is not knowing when to use "the" or "a". Edit: unless it is a Russian pretending to be an American who is pretending to be Russian which, who the hell knows, anything is possible.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Noticed this in the same post: "Let us be speaking regarding corruption" That sounds like a common phrasing I hear from Indians who aren't native English speakers. So maybe Indian pretending to be an American pretending to be Russian? Heh.
rdtsc 10y ago
I speak 3 languages including Russian. I agree with the throwaway's post that it sounds like someone was trying to write like a Russian but didn't do a very good job.
- draw_down 10y ago
  Well, they certainly seem to have succeeded in fooling plenty of people around here.
  - throwaway71958 10y ago
    To quote a Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin: "Oh it is not hard to fool me, for I am willing to be fooled."
    - wyldfire 10y ago
      Count me in -- I bought it / am buying it. Who has an interest in making it look like Russia? I thought the folks who were acting concerned about the young throwaway accounts were just being paranoid. Until the next sequential throwaway account showed up and piled on. What gives? Is HN influential enough to deserve astroturfing / propaganda from state intelligence services?
      - throwaway71958 10y ago
        It's not so much about "making it look like Russia" as it is about making the current administration look illegitimate. There are literally trillions of dollars at stake, as well as very affluent lifestyles of some very influential people who have been running things for decades. They might end up being replaced by a different group of people, and they don't like that one bit. And they are fighting it tooth and nail. Just goes to show how little power is really vested in the officials we elect (yes, "we", I am a US citizen), and how much of it is wielded by the amorphous Washington DC apparatus that doesn't change no matter who you vote into office. Explicitly going after them, the way Trump promised in the final months of his campaign, is a suicide mission, if he actually decides to follow through on the threat. But I don't think he actually has the power or indeed the smarts to "drain the swamp" in any kind of meaningful way. This draining is long overdue, but there's no way to accomplish this without some world class statesmanship, and without having the intelligence community on your side, and Trump is at odds with both of those things. And here's some Russian perspective on "draining the swamp": that's actually one thing Putin did when he came to power. Under Yeltsin, the government was basically run by oligarchs, and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. Putin and Russia's security/intelligence community that installed him laid down the ground rules, and made it clear that from there on out orders would be coming down from the Kremlin, not the other way around. One oligarch rebelled (Khodorkovsky) and was put in prison for a decade. Which, by the way, was entirely deserved. Most Russians were disappointed that other oligarchs didn't follow. The issue with "draining the swamp" is that this creates voids that other people fill. Which they did under Putin. So even though oligarchs are pretty obedient now, there's a much stronger swamp sub-structure of Putin's pals under the covers which is darn near impossible to remove until he dies, and they're all under his control. So armed with this perspective, I like two features of the US political system that many other Americans (native and naturalized) intensely dislike: the divided congress and the constant Mexican standoff between the executive and the legislative branch. If those guys could agree on anything, that's when we'd really be in trouble. Case in point is once again Russia, where the executive branch can request whatever laws it wants and be 100% sure they'll pass the Duma. The result is predictable: harebrained laws protecting the incumbent regime.
samirillian 10y ago
Trying to figure out who they are by analyzing the content of these posts is like trying to figure out if a child is lying by asking them repeatedly. Other sources of evidence are necessary. Anyway, while their nationality isn't obvious, their childishness is. I think that's the only detail that can really be gleaned from the text itself.
- Mahn 10y ago
  Unless the childishness is also intentional to mislead. The whole post is bizarre, I would take it all with a grain of salt.
hnaparst 10y ago
Shlomo Argamon has reposted his linguistic analysis http://multaverba.blogspot.com/2017/04/initial-linguistic-analysis-of.html http://multaverba.blogspot.com/2017/04/initial-linguistic-an...
- Sacho 10y ago
  After reading the analysis, I think the author focused too much on "native speaker". It seems entirely plausible to me that the text was written by a fluent non-native English speaker, who was trying to make the post look like the more common broken English proclamations from Russian hacking groups for whatever reason(blending in and throwing off investigations maybe).

YooLi 10y ago

Why are you so certain they are Russian?

snowpanda 10y ago
It's the popular thing to assume these days. It's also very insulting to Russian people in my opinion. But I guess it's ok to be prejudice towards some group of people but not others.
- DanBC 10y ago
  Russia uses online trolling as a tool. It's widely documented. This use of trolling leaves Russia open to accusations even when they're not involved. For a well documented case: http://www.stratcomcoe.org/internet-trolling-hybrid-warfare-tool-case-latvia-0 http://www.stratcomcoe.org/internet-trolling-hybrid-warfare-...
  - paradite 10y ago
    Widely documented by "The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence", the most obvious enemy of Russia? Human rights violations in the U.S. are also well documented by China: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/26/china-issues-report-on-terrible-u-s-human-rights-record/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/26/china-issues-r...
    - doktrin 10y ago
      The US does legitimately have an imperfect human rights track record, and most Americans who follow the news would agree (while at the same time being aware of China's own hypocrisy in this matter) Likewise, Russia has a well documented history of sponsoring online propaganda campaigns, and most people who aren't delusional or paid shills would agree. Two negative things about two different countries can in fact both be based in truth. Weird.
      - zigzigzag 10y ago
        paradite is saying it's not well documented. It's poorly documented by people highly incentivised to lie. But hey, if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice.
        doktrin 10y ago
        > poorly documented Uh huh https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino https://themoscowtimes.com/news/st-petersburg-troll-factory-attacked-with-molotov-cocktails-55900 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/st-petersburg-troll-factory-... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-... https://www.inopressa.ru/article/03Jun2014/buzzfeed/web_rus.html https://www.inopressa.ru/article/03Jun2014/buzzfeed/web_rus.... https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitter-bots/ https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte... > if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice. Not true, but it would definitely take more than that hand-wavy uncertainty yarn you're trying to spin
        seppin 10y ago
        I honestly think HN is the target of some of these trolls as well.
  - rev 10y ago
    Well documented analysis of a corpus of comments on some Latvian sites, yes. Anything in 100+ pages serving as a proof of Kremlin connections with the "hybrid trolls" (gotta love the newspeak)? Not so much. I don't know whether Russians are xenophobic aggressive bastards or knights in shining armor exposing the wrongdoings of others, it's just that claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated.
    - doktrin 10y ago
      > claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated. What? gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.
      - rev 10y ago
        Alacritous state actors more nimble at trolling than 4chan? You decide, I don't care. My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved - if you read into "Trolls from Olgino" reports carefully. US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" [0]. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/filling-americas-language-education-potholes/392876/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/fillin...
        doktrin 10y ago
        > My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved Disagree. There's no such thing as perfect certainty, but the only real question about Russian troll sponsorship is one of scale. https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitter-bots/ https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte... > US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" This is an interesting observation, but I think you either underestimate American resources, or overestimate the logistics of online influence manipulation campaigns. For illustration : there are about 1m fluent Russian speakers in the US, and about 4m fluent English speakers in Russia. Sure, it's a bigger talent pool : but both countries could rope in bilingual cyber propagandists by the thousands if they felt so inclined.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    > Russia uses online trolling as a tool. So does JTRIG[1][2], and probably many other groups as well. Russia isn't the only suspect for this kind trolling. [1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ [2] https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog/ https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog/
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  Honestly I think appeals to emotion like this have no place in dispassionate conversations about international espionage.
- burkaman 10y ago
  This is a discussion about the Russian government, it doesn't really have much to do with Russian people in general.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    That sentence is correct however you read it out.
    - noobermin 10y ago
      It is "discrimination" to be suspicious of state actors? Was Snowden performing discrimination in exposing the NSA's spying?
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        Did you reply to the correct person? I never said anything about discrimination, nor did the person I was replying to.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        Prejudice and discrimination are close enough to synonyms. You shouldn't be confused by the word swap.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        ...But neither of us said Prejudice either!
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        "It's the popular thing to assume these days. It's also very insulting to Russian people in my opinion. But I guess it's ok to be prejudice towards some group of people but not others." Is that not the comment you were calling correct? That's what "the person [you] replied to" was talking about, that use of the word prejudice.
kafkaesq 10y ago
FWIW Snowden speculates "Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility. Here's why that is significant" - https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514891813945344 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514891813945344
- doktrin 10y ago
  That 13-point tweet series paints a surprisingly plausible picture. I'm looking forward to getting the full story in about 20 years time.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    We'll be very lucky if in 20 years, the world is still so free and functional as it is now... and I'm not trying to talk up the state of the world today.
    - doktrin 10y ago
      I try to remain optimistic, because allows me to continue being largely complacent with and complicit in the slow decline of free and civil society. Slightly tongue in cheek, but only slightly.
- Natsu 10y ago
  It's weird, though. Sure, it could be some kind of tit-for-tat thing, but I wonder more about 3rd party 'allies' in the middle east who have more to gain by pitting the US against Russia. Then again, I'm sure that there are enough people and intelligence services in play to make everything confusing.

revelation 10y ago

It's mindless drivel. The only thing you are reading is a mirror of your own preconceptions.

roywiggins 10y ago

Alternatively, they're someone else trying to look as if they're Russian-affiliated when they're not. "I work for Russia" would be unbelievable, so they sidle around trying to look suspiciously Russian without saying so.

throwaway71958 10y ago

As a Russian myself, I can tell you with certainty that there are mistakes in that text that a Russian ESL speaker would never make, and verb tenses are a bit too good for an unskilled speaker. Due to the combination of these two factors, I bet this was written by a native English speaker who thinks he/she knows the mistakes a Russian would make. They're wrong.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
doktrin 10y ago
Just seems like general obfuscation to me. It would be very weird for anyone to make assumptions about their identity based on broken english.
- mootothemax 10y ago
  While I get your wider point, I find the different types of mistakes that ESL'ers with different mother tongues make absolutely fascinating. I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles, people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons. When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in English - dear god, so much about my native tongue that I had no idea about, and yet made particular nationality error combinations really stand out. It's crazy fun. Edit: and I love my eldest's progress with English. While she's basically a bilingual preschooler, she tends to speak English with polish word order: I like cars red. Her natural instinct is to also use the polish rules for nouns when choosing he/she/it. It's an absolutely fascinating process I feel privileged to observe.
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    > I like cars red Interestingly, that word order is also valid English, though it has a slightly different meaning than "I like red cars". Example: "I like [my] soup warm". "I like soup warm, but you can eat it cold and left over if you want." "I like having soup warm" "I like my cookies freshly baked" "I like men muscular and toned" "I like my women blonde, so you can go for the brunette" "I like cars red" doesn't quite work as well but doesn't seem wrong. Add a little context and it seems more normal. "As a buyer of many sports cars, I like my cars red, even despite the speeding tickets I get". Perhaps a linguist could explain how this phrasing works. (That said, of course I advocate teaching her to speak fluently and to use that word order only when she intends its subtlety of meaning.)

scythe 10y ago

I think that any agency with the capability to break into the NSA has also the capability to hire a proofreader. That is, any mistakes left in the documents are there intentionally.

doktrin 10y ago
This thread is slowly devolving into the linguistics equivalent of the poison scene in the Princess Bride : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL4c9gCRSKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL4c9gCRSKY

tyingq 10y ago

They went even harder at it in an earlier medium post: "TheShadowBrokers is having special trick or treat for Amerikanskis tonight." https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/message-5-trick-or-treat-e43f946f93e6 https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/message-5-trick-or-treat-... I suppose though, that "Amerikanski" might be used outside Russia. Serbia, Bulgaria? Misdirection seems more likely though.

rukuu001 10y ago
> is having special trick or treat for Amerikanskis tonight Sounds like a villian from a 60's Bond flick.
- ConroyBumpus 10y ago
  It's way funnier if you read it in the voice of Boris Badenov (of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame).
mladenkovacevic 10y ago
Amerikanski is used in those languages to indicate ownership (eg. This is an American car) so to someone of slavic speaking origin this would be wrong (they would've said Amerikanci to indicate plural). But even aside from that, this honestly sounds so put on. Even the worst english speakers I know from eastern Europe know that you add an "s" to form plural. We all take English from elementary school and nobody would make that mistake, not to mention that it's a mistake even in a slavic language. A much more common mistake you will find is not knowing when to use "the" or "a". Edit: unless it is a Russian pretending to be an American who is pretending to be Russian which, who the hell knows, anything is possible.
- tyingq 10y ago
  Noticed this in the same post: "Let us be speaking regarding corruption" That sounds like a common phrasing I hear from Indians who aren't native English speakers. So maybe Indian pretending to be an American pretending to be Russian? Heh.

rdtsc 10y ago

I speak 3 languages including Russian. I agree with the throwaway's post that it sounds like someone was trying to write like a Russian but didn't do a very good job.

draw_down 10y ago
Well, they certainly seem to have succeeded in fooling plenty of people around here.
- throwaway71958 10y ago
  To quote a Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin: "Oh it is not hard to fool me, for I am willing to be fooled."
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Count me in -- I bought it / am buying it. Who has an interest in making it look like Russia? I thought the folks who were acting concerned about the young throwaway accounts were just being paranoid. Until the next sequential throwaway account showed up and piled on. What gives? Is HN influential enough to deserve astroturfing / propaganda from state intelligence services?
    - throwaway71958 10y ago
      It's not so much about "making it look like Russia" as it is about making the current administration look illegitimate. There are literally trillions of dollars at stake, as well as very affluent lifestyles of some very influential people who have been running things for decades. They might end up being replaced by a different group of people, and they don't like that one bit. And they are fighting it tooth and nail. Just goes to show how little power is really vested in the officials we elect (yes, "we", I am a US citizen), and how much of it is wielded by the amorphous Washington DC apparatus that doesn't change no matter who you vote into office. Explicitly going after them, the way Trump promised in the final months of his campaign, is a suicide mission, if he actually decides to follow through on the threat. But I don't think he actually has the power or indeed the smarts to "drain the swamp" in any kind of meaningful way. This draining is long overdue, but there's no way to accomplish this without some world class statesmanship, and without having the intelligence community on your side, and Trump is at odds with both of those things. And here's some Russian perspective on "draining the swamp": that's actually one thing Putin did when he came to power. Under Yeltsin, the government was basically run by oligarchs, and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. Putin and Russia's security/intelligence community that installed him laid down the ground rules, and made it clear that from there on out orders would be coming down from the Kremlin, not the other way around. One oligarch rebelled (Khodorkovsky) and was put in prison for a decade. Which, by the way, was entirely deserved. Most Russians were disappointed that other oligarchs didn't follow. The issue with "draining the swamp" is that this creates voids that other people fill. Which they did under Putin. So even though oligarchs are pretty obedient now, there's a much stronger swamp sub-structure of Putin's pals under the covers which is darn near impossible to remove until he dies, and they're all under his control. So armed with this perspective, I like two features of the US political system that many other Americans (native and naturalized) intensely dislike: the divided congress and the constant Mexican standoff between the executive and the legislative branch. If those guys could agree on anything, that's when we'd really be in trouble. Case in point is once again Russia, where the executive branch can request whatever laws it wants and be 100% sure they'll pass the Duma. The result is predictable: harebrained laws protecting the incumbent regime.

samirillian 10y ago

Trying to figure out who they are by analyzing the content of these posts is like trying to figure out if a child is lying by asking them repeatedly. Other sources of evidence are necessary. Anyway, while their nationality isn't obvious, their childishness is. I think that's the only detail that can really be gleaned from the text itself.

Mahn 10y ago
Unless the childishness is also intentional to mislead. The whole post is bizarre, I would take it all with a grain of salt.

hnaparst 10y ago

Shlomo Argamon has reposted his linguistic analysis http://multaverba.blogspot.com/2017/04/initial-linguistic-analysis-of.html http://multaverba.blogspot.com/2017/04/initial-linguistic-an...

Sacho 10y ago
After reading the analysis, I think the author focused too much on "native speaker". It seems entirely plausible to me that the text was written by a fluent non-native English speaker, who was trying to make the post look like the more common broken English proclamations from Russian hacking groups for whatever reason(blending in and throwing off investigations maybe).