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Evidently the download has been specially crafted and surreptitiously emplaced to globally disseminate a steganographically embedded key that decrypts tailored

Evidently the download has been specially crafted and surreptitiously emplaced to globally disseminate a steganographically embedded key that decrypts tailored malware aimed at disrupting the [REDACTED] nuclear weapons programme and for which the app is a weaponised delivery sabot distributed and marketed as part of the same covert operation. What I'm trying to say is, the image is a plant

4cao 6y ago
> What I'm trying to say is [...] Since you seem to be responding to me, how does anything you wrote relate to anything I wrote?
- rob74 6y ago
  It's usually not a good idea to explain a joke, and I'm not the GP so I'm not sure that's what they meant, but "plant" has multiple meanings, and I suspect they are referring to meanings 3 to 5 from this list: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/plant_2 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ... . Basically, you were asking for some kind of elaborate meaning to a random image downloaded by a random app, and they provided an elaborate conspiracy theory to match your question...
  - 4cao 6y ago
    Thanks, I appreciate your effort but there really isn't any need to explain this to me. I understood the parent comment this way too (i.e. as a snide remark trying way too hard to be funny in the worst possible, low effort, Reddit kind of way). It's just that since it's rare to see this kind of response here, I was wondering if the author was trying to make any finer point, although admittedly that was unlikely to begin with. > Basically, you were asking for some kind of elaborate meaning to a random image downloaded by a random app [...] Basically, since they already traced the culprit with a lot of effort (as opposed to just blocking the request URL/UA string pair, which was also an option), the logical ultimate step to conclude their investigation should be to see what the code does, especially considering it's trivial to do so. While I would not expect to discover any "elaborate meaning" behind it, and never claimed anything like that, I certainly think it would be prudent to check what was going on if I had to decide what to do about it next. For example, it could have been intended as some proxy/filtering/DPI check. I've also seen similar stuff before incorporated into some custom Android builds to generate fake ad traffic. It really beggars belief that on a website called _Hacker_ News it's necessary to explain why sometimes it's worth it to be curious to people who themselves were curious enough to read this story and the associated comments but then halfway through decided their curiosity was satisfied and thus nobody else should be asking any more questions either (to be clear, I'm referring to the parent commenter here).
    - zymhan 6y ago
      Lol, I don't think you got the joke if you needed a paragraph long explanation of why you don't think it's funny. It's also okay to not get a joke, you can simply move on with your life.
    - jhamilton 6y ago
      Heaven forbid someone make a joke on the internet and not take your frustrations as seriously as you seem to take yourself. To address your frustration at the analysis stopping there: What do you expect someone who is likely more versed in web dev and their unique distributed systems to do? Do you expect them to have the expertise to decompile an app from a third party, an app popular enough to cause this much traffic? And if they did, would it be worthwhile when their only concern is limiting/lowering that traffic?
      - 4cao 6y ago
        > What do you expect someone [...] to do? I don't expect anyone to do anything. As a person reading this story, I just commented on the fact that it would be interesting to know more details as to how the app ended up making these requests in the first place. I was just expressing my personal opinion that if I went this far investigating the situation, that's what I'd like to find out as well. > [...] when their only concern is limiting/lowering that traffic? If that were their only concern, they could have just (quoting my previous comment): >> block[ed] the request URL/UA string pair, which was also an option However: >> since they already traced the culprit with a lot of effort [...] the logical ultimate step to conclude their investigation should be to see what the code does Like everything else, this is just my personal opinion of course. > your frustrations > your frustration Not really sure where this comes from but it's really unnecessary. I'm glad for Wikimedia that they resolved the issue, and shared the details, which make for an interesting read.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        > Heaven forbid someone make a joke on the internet Jokes are funny. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 > I agree with what people have already said, but I think there's one more point to add: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are. We have a tendency to think, "This idea of mine is hilarious! And different! Surely this witticism is the exception." And we are usually wrong. When you have N people all doing that, there's a lot of noise. > I try to gently point this out to people who complain when their attempt at humor has been downvoted by the community. It's not that we don't like humor. We just don't like banal attempts at humor, which becomes noise. Or, put in a less charitable fashion, "You're not as funny as you think you are."

4cao 6y ago

> What I'm trying to say is [...] Since you seem to be responding to me, how does anything you wrote relate to anything I wrote?

rob74 6y ago
It's usually not a good idea to explain a joke, and I'm not the GP so I'm not sure that's what they meant, but "plant" has multiple meanings, and I suspect they are referring to meanings 3 to 5 from this list: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/plant_2 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ... . Basically, you were asking for some kind of elaborate meaning to a random image downloaded by a random app, and they provided an elaborate conspiracy theory to match your question...
- 4cao 6y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate your effort but there really isn't any need to explain this to me. I understood the parent comment this way too (i.e. as a snide remark trying way too hard to be funny in the worst possible, low effort, Reddit kind of way). It's just that since it's rare to see this kind of response here, I was wondering if the author was trying to make any finer point, although admittedly that was unlikely to begin with. > Basically, you were asking for some kind of elaborate meaning to a random image downloaded by a random app [...] Basically, since they already traced the culprit with a lot of effort (as opposed to just blocking the request URL/UA string pair, which was also an option), the logical ultimate step to conclude their investigation should be to see what the code does, especially considering it's trivial to do so. While I would not expect to discover any "elaborate meaning" behind it, and never claimed anything like that, I certainly think it would be prudent to check what was going on if I had to decide what to do about it next. For example, it could have been intended as some proxy/filtering/DPI check. I've also seen similar stuff before incorporated into some custom Android builds to generate fake ad traffic. It really beggars belief that on a website called _Hacker_ News it's necessary to explain why sometimes it's worth it to be curious to people who themselves were curious enough to read this story and the associated comments but then halfway through decided their curiosity was satisfied and thus nobody else should be asking any more questions either (to be clear, I'm referring to the parent commenter here).
  - zymhan 6y ago
    Lol, I don't think you got the joke if you needed a paragraph long explanation of why you don't think it's funny. It's also okay to not get a joke, you can simply move on with your life.
  - jhamilton 6y ago
    Heaven forbid someone make a joke on the internet and not take your frustrations as seriously as you seem to take yourself. To address your frustration at the analysis stopping there: What do you expect someone who is likely more versed in web dev and their unique distributed systems to do? Do you expect them to have the expertise to decompile an app from a third party, an app popular enough to cause this much traffic? And if they did, would it be worthwhile when their only concern is limiting/lowering that traffic?
    - 4cao 6y ago
      > What do you expect someone [...] to do? I don't expect anyone to do anything. As a person reading this story, I just commented on the fact that it would be interesting to know more details as to how the app ended up making these requests in the first place. I was just expressing my personal opinion that if I went this far investigating the situation, that's what I'd like to find out as well. > [...] when their only concern is limiting/lowering that traffic? If that were their only concern, they could have just (quoting my previous comment): >> block[ed] the request URL/UA string pair, which was also an option However: >> since they already traced the culprit with a lot of effort [...] the logical ultimate step to conclude their investigation should be to see what the code does Like everything else, this is just my personal opinion of course. > your frustrations > your frustration Not really sure where this comes from but it's really unnecessary. I'm glad for Wikimedia that they resolved the issue, and shared the details, which make for an interesting read.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      > Heaven forbid someone make a joke on the internet Jokes are funny. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 > I agree with what people have already said, but I think there's one more point to add: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are. We have a tendency to think, "This idea of mine is hilarious! And different! Surely this witticism is the exception." And we are usually wrong. When you have N people all doing that, there's a lot of noise. > I try to gently point this out to people who complain when their attempt at humor has been downvoted by the community. It's not that we don't like humor. We just don't like banal attempts at humor, which becomes noise. Or, put in a less charitable fashion, "You're not as funny as you think you are."