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You could be an NSA sleeper agent, using HN to launch false-flag propaganda operations. Go ahead and prove otherwise, if you can. Until then I'm going to treat

You could be an NSA sleeper agent, using HN to launch false-flag propaganda operations. Go ahead and prove otherwise, if you can. Until then I'm going to treat everything you say and do as an attempt to spy on me.

vincie 13y ago
You could be an NSA sleeper-sleeper agent, using HN to launch false-false-flag propaganda operations. Go ahead and prove otherwise, if you can. Until then I'm going to treat everything you say and do as an attempt to spy on me.
- mck- 13y ago
  Stack Overflow
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  We're probably all NSA sleeper agents, every one of us, we just don't know it because we haven't been activated yet.
tedks 13y ago
I suppose so, but the NSA budget would have to be awfully big to fund me. It's high-cost, and low-gain. In contrast, owning Apple would be a massive win. But you're free to treat everything I say and do as an attempt to spy on me. How will that change your behavior? Or are you being deliberately obtuse for the sake of disrupting discussion?
- sbuk 13y ago
  But your comment was obtuse too. Throwing the NSA thing at Apple is ridiculous frankly. It seems that the vast majority of tech companies were involved, including the likes of Google and all seemed to be far more embroiled is the sordid affair than Apple. So why are they more likely to be sharing stuff that anyone else? It's all very disingenuous from where I'm standing.
  - tedks 13y ago
    A single walled garden is easily subverted by HUMINT. That is a valid counterstatement to the statement "Walled gardens make users more safe." I can't see how that was obtuse. What part did you not understand?
    - sbuk 13y ago
      Oh, I understand what you are saying perfectly. You are going about it in an obtuse manner.
- ubernostrum 13y ago
  I think there is a point at which mindlessly yelling "WHAT ABOUT THE NSA" at, well, basically everything stops being useful, because it offers no insight whatsoever, and provokes no thoughts that hadn't already been provoked. In fact, past a certain point it becomes counterproductive, as it enters "Old Man Yells At Cloud" territory and opens up the commenter, and by connection the content of the comment, as a subject of ridicule. Also, you've still not proven to me that you don't work for the NSA.
  - tedks 13y ago
    Well, the insight I was going for here is that a walled garden is only as safe as the gardener, and whatever trust we as humans could have in that gardener should be totally shattered in the post-NSA leak world. If you think that isn't a legitimate insight, or if you're so blazing-fast that you'd already made that inference, I suppose you're entitled to think that, but it's very difficult for most humans to re-compute all of their cached thoughts in the light of new information, and the NSA leaks aren't any different.

vincie 13y ago

You could be an NSA sleeper-sleeper agent, using HN to launch false-false-flag propaganda operations. Go ahead and prove otherwise, if you can. Until then I'm going to treat everything you say and do as an attempt to spy on me.

mck- 13y ago
Stack Overflow
sliverstorm 13y ago
We're probably all NSA sleeper agents, every one of us, we just don't know it because we haven't been activated yet.

tedks 13y ago

I suppose so, but the NSA budget would have to be awfully big to fund me. It's high-cost, and low-gain. In contrast, owning Apple would be a massive win. But you're free to treat everything I say and do as an attempt to spy on me. How will that change your behavior? Or are you being deliberately obtuse for the sake of disrupting discussion?

sbuk 13y ago
But your comment was obtuse too. Throwing the NSA thing at Apple is ridiculous frankly. It seems that the vast majority of tech companies were involved, including the likes of Google and all seemed to be far more embroiled is the sordid affair than Apple. So why are they more likely to be sharing stuff that anyone else? It's all very disingenuous from where I'm standing.
- tedks 13y ago
  A single walled garden is easily subverted by HUMINT. That is a valid counterstatement to the statement "Walled gardens make users more safe." I can't see how that was obtuse. What part did you not understand?
  - sbuk 13y ago
    Oh, I understand what you are saying perfectly. You are going about it in an obtuse manner.
ubernostrum 13y ago
I think there is a point at which mindlessly yelling "WHAT ABOUT THE NSA" at, well, basically everything stops being useful, because it offers no insight whatsoever, and provokes no thoughts that hadn't already been provoked. In fact, past a certain point it becomes counterproductive, as it enters "Old Man Yells At Cloud" territory and opens up the commenter, and by connection the content of the comment, as a subject of ridicule. Also, you've still not proven to me that you don't work for the NSA.
- tedks 13y ago
  Well, the insight I was going for here is that a walled garden is only as safe as the gardener, and whatever trust we as humans could have in that gardener should be totally shattered in the post-NSA leak world. If you think that isn't a legitimate insight, or if you're so blazing-fast that you'd already made that inference, I suppose you're entitled to think that, but it's very difficult for most humans to re-compute all of their cached thoughts in the light of new information, and the NSA leaks aren't any different.