4 ms·

Not really sure what is so obnoxious about this. The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Quite a high design standard to compare

by akuji1993 7y ago

Not really sure what is so obnoxious about this. The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Quite a high design standard to compare to and they're doing pretty well. No idea what you are talking about.

sparkling 7y ago
> The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Not him, but for me: yes and thats the problem. I don't need Infotainment wrapped, information wrapped in some storytelling timeline with broken scrolling. Just give me a well done article without the nonsense, Jesus. These animation, hex code dumps etc. add ZERO value to the article.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Us techies are not the target group for such articles, they're made for the "normal" population.
- hakantan 7y ago
  Hi. One of the author(s) of the article here. The plain article with information-only is over here: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/winnti-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/winnti-101.html We released a longer version, because we do hear very often that people don't understand how these intrusions are actually working. Also, we tried to show the scale. -> both long form and shorter version hope that helps.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Who was the target audience for the long-form article? It has some technical details, but they appear to be used more for decorative effect. E.g. the string daa0 c7cb f4f0 fbcf d6d1 from the hexdump is eventually revealed to correspond to C:\Windows, but isn't actually explained. I was able to come up with the following Python for the obfuscation: [hex((i + 153) ^ ord(c)) for i, c in enumerate(r'C:\Windows')] but most of your readers probably just see a jumble of letters and numbers they're told has some significance, but which appears incomprehensible to them. Did you do testing with focus groups to determine whether the longer article helped people "understand how these intrusions are actually working" or whether it just made readers aware that they don't understand?
    - hakantan 7y ago
      This is a very good question. By now, there is a git repo (https://github.com/br-data/2019-winnti-analyse https://github.com/br-data/2019-winnti-analyse) for the more technical folks (includes yara, some scripts etc.) We don't have focus groups, but we want to convey to our readers are certain understanding how these operations work. What threat hunting is, why it is important and all that. At some point you have to make some certain decisions. One was not to explain what a rolling xor is. So yeah, we had to simplify a lot. The truth is, though, this stuff is hard for most people, myself included. Hope that helps.
      - yorwba 7y ago
        I didn't expect you to deliver a crash course that would allow even non-technical readers to understand all details, so I realize that you had to leave out a lot. That puts you in an awkward spot where your explanation probably creates more new questions than it answers. Some news websites hesitate to put external links in their articles because they lead readers off the site, but I think they can be helpful to provide jumping-off points for the interested reader. For example, the git repository could be linked somewhere in the article, or as part of the "about the project" section at the end. PS: The top-level comment of this thread was flagged and hidden, so most users won't see your replies here. You might want to post another top-level comment with the additional information you provided here, or maybe ask the mods via hn@ycombinator.com to make your replies visible.
        akuji1993 7y ago
        > Some news websites hesitate to put external links in their articles because they lead readers off the site For me, this is almost always a sign, that they don't think that high about their own content. If your content is great and you write engaging articles that are interesting to the reader, he will return. Trying to stop the reader from leaving, in a browser tab he can close at any time, is kind of ridiculous to me..
  - jamesmadison66 7y ago
    the graphics are a great addition. Seems like this is targeted towards a non-technical audience, but finally making an effort to explain what's going on technically like other STEM articles from do from generic news sources. Nice job if you're an author
bflesch 7y ago
Problem is that you are forced to pay three times the price of Spotify/Netflix per month for this stuff in Germany, as this website (and many others) is financed by a mandatory fee.
- Bouncingsoul1 7y ago
  Exaggerated,it is not "three times" , if you combine Spotify/Netflix you could say "you pay the same per month as for Spotify+Netflix combined (around 17€)", If you compare it to Netflix or Spotify the ratio would be 1:1.5/7. As it is payed per household the ratio is even lower if you have a family. I'm not a big fan of this mandatory fee either but we should stay a the facts.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  So what? With 210€ a year it's not much more expensive than the 162€ in UK, for example. At least they're politically neutral and stick to facts and solid journalistic work, compared to private TV stations or the Axel Springer Verlag...
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    Except the BBC produces much more high quality content, consumed worldwide(former Top Gear) on a smaller budget than Germany which has little to show for in quality content of international or even national succes.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      UK content is simply consumed worldwide because it's english. German is only spoken in three countries - Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Everything produced here must be synchronized or subbed making exports expensive, in addition to Germans not liking risky experiments very much which means there is less interest.
      - vanilla-almond 7y ago
        Although the BBC produces a lot of rubbish, it also produces high quality drama, comedies and documentaries. People watch these not simply because they are in English. People will watch quality programming regardless of the language. Just witness the popularity of Scandinavian dramas that have won audiences across the world. Although Germany dubs foreign-language programmes (badly), lots of other countries are happy to watch with subtitles.

sparkling 7y ago

> The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Not him, but for me: yes and thats the problem. I don't need Infotainment wrapped, information wrapped in some storytelling timeline with broken scrolling. Just give me a well done article without the nonsense, Jesus. These animation, hex code dumps etc. add ZERO value to the article.

mschuster91 7y ago
Us techies are not the target group for such articles, they're made for the "normal" population.
hakantan 7y ago
Hi. One of the author(s) of the article here. The plain article with information-only is over here: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/winnti-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/winnti-101.html We released a longer version, because we do hear very often that people don't understand how these intrusions are actually working. Also, we tried to show the scale. -> both long form and shorter version hope that helps.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Who was the target audience for the long-form article? It has some technical details, but they appear to be used more for decorative effect. E.g. the string daa0 c7cb f4f0 fbcf d6d1 from the hexdump is eventually revealed to correspond to C:\Windows, but isn't actually explained. I was able to come up with the following Python for the obfuscation: [hex((i + 153) ^ ord(c)) for i, c in enumerate(r'C:\Windows')] but most of your readers probably just see a jumble of letters and numbers they're told has some significance, but which appears incomprehensible to them. Did you do testing with focus groups to determine whether the longer article helped people "understand how these intrusions are actually working" or whether it just made readers aware that they don't understand?
  - hakantan 7y ago
    This is a very good question. By now, there is a git repo (https://github.com/br-data/2019-winnti-analyse https://github.com/br-data/2019-winnti-analyse) for the more technical folks (includes yara, some scripts etc.) We don't have focus groups, but we want to convey to our readers are certain understanding how these operations work. What threat hunting is, why it is important and all that. At some point you have to make some certain decisions. One was not to explain what a rolling xor is. So yeah, we had to simplify a lot. The truth is, though, this stuff is hard for most people, myself included. Hope that helps.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      I didn't expect you to deliver a crash course that would allow even non-technical readers to understand all details, so I realize that you had to leave out a lot. That puts you in an awkward spot where your explanation probably creates more new questions than it answers. Some news websites hesitate to put external links in their articles because they lead readers off the site, but I think they can be helpful to provide jumping-off points for the interested reader. For example, the git repository could be linked somewhere in the article, or as part of the "about the project" section at the end. PS: The top-level comment of this thread was flagged and hidden, so most users won't see your replies here. You might want to post another top-level comment with the additional information you provided here, or maybe ask the mods via hn@ycombinator.com to make your replies visible.
      - akuji1993 7y ago
        > Some news websites hesitate to put external links in their articles because they lead readers off the site For me, this is almost always a sign, that they don't think that high about their own content. If your content is great and you write engaging articles that are interesting to the reader, he will return. Trying to stop the reader from leaving, in a browser tab he can close at any time, is kind of ridiculous to me..
- jamesmadison66 7y ago
  the graphics are a great addition. Seems like this is targeted towards a non-technical audience, but finally making an effort to explain what's going on technically like other STEM articles from do from generic news sources. Nice job if you're an author

bflesch 7y ago

Problem is that you are forced to pay three times the price of Spotify/Netflix per month for this stuff in Germany, as this website (and many others) is financed by a mandatory fee.

Bouncingsoul1 7y ago
Exaggerated,it is not "three times" , if you combine Spotify/Netflix you could say "you pay the same per month as for Spotify+Netflix combined (around 17€)", If you compare it to Netflix or Spotify the ratio would be 1:1.5/7. As it is payed per household the ratio is even lower if you have a family. I'm not a big fan of this mandatory fee either but we should stay a the facts.
mschuster91 7y ago
So what? With 210€ a year it's not much more expensive than the 162€ in UK, for example. At least they're politically neutral and stick to facts and solid journalistic work, compared to private TV stations or the Axel Springer Verlag...
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  Except the BBC produces much more high quality content, consumed worldwide(former Top Gear) on a smaller budget than Germany which has little to show for in quality content of international or even national succes.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    UK content is simply consumed worldwide because it's english. German is only spoken in three countries - Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Everything produced here must be synchronized or subbed making exports expensive, in addition to Germans not liking risky experiments very much which means there is less interest.
    - vanilla-almond 7y ago
      Although the BBC produces a lot of rubbish, it also produces high quality drama, comedies and documentaries. People watch these not simply because they are in English. People will watch quality programming regardless of the language. Just witness the popularity of Scandinavian dramas that have won audiences across the world. Although Germany dubs foreign-language programmes (badly), lots of other countries are happy to watch with subtitles.