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I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. First, it has little to nothing to do with the comment posted, which concerns not a "cyberwar" but t

by jnbiche 12y ago

I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. First, it has little to nothing to do with the comment posted, which concerns not a "cyberwar" but the possible police seizure of a Tor server. The assumption is it's either a false alarm or a police raid. No one thinks this was done by ISIS. Second, a post using the word "cyberwar" in a non-ironic manner at the top of HN?! O tempora o mores! So while your observation about an increased number of scripting attacks is interesting (assuming you did in fact establish a reliable baseline) it's in a strange place. Did you mean to post elsewhere?

harkyns_castle 12y ago
I don't know, sometimes something in an article triggers another stream of thought or tangent, and its a comments section, and other people might want to discuss that. I don't necessarily agree with the comment (as I have next to no visibility of this) but certainly don't mind reading comments on it. Maybe I'm wrongly using the site!
- tehwalrus 12y ago
  FWIW, I come to Hacker News to read the tangents.
  - Chronic30 12y ago
    Perhaps you should use www.reddit.com
    - tehwalrus 12y ago
      Hacker News has much better tangents.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  I like tangents on HN, too, and I like discussions. That wasn't my point. It was that the comment apparently misunderstood or didn't read the linked message.
- jnem 12y ago
  Is this comment itself not a tangent on a tangent?
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Obviously I can't comment on why things get voted or don't get voted on, my observation is that people upvote comments they enjoy or agree with and down vote comments they disagee with and/or would rather not read. But I can respond to your other question. > Did you mean to post elsewhere? No, I meant to post it here. The author, Thomas White, writes of losing control of his Tor exit node servers, not to this audience but to the folks who read the tor.user newsgroup. Robert, aka chummm, posted it here as being of interest to the community. His was one of a series of articles/notes being posted here that have described potentially state-actor level activity. And there has of course been quite a bit about the Sony hack in the news. I also happen to run a fairly large internet visible infrastructure which acts a weird sort of observation instrument for the network as well. I presume that Robert submitted it here because he felt it was interesting, and a number of people concurred with him. And after reading the article of yet another person finding themselves on the receiving end of external forces trying to compromise their systems, it crossed some vaguely defined threshold for me between crystallized a thought that has been tugging at my subconscious for probably a month or more. That being that the the number of and frequency of penetration attacks is noticeably higher now than it was before. Yet I don't keep some sort of threat index or anything, I just get to see the number of things my automated defenses have fended off, or the clusters in the datacenter. And I allow that it is entirely possible for the combination of lots of computer intrusion in the news cycle has combined with perhaps a lot of bored teenagers on winter break or something to create something illusory. But as this story brought that observation to the forefront of my consciousness, I thought I would share what I was observing here, in the comments people are making about this story.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  Yes, it's a very interesting post, and I'm glad it was posted here, regardless of how things turn out. Your comment/observation is also very interesting, but had little to do with the Tor issues. So I was confused. But I get sometimes things trigger tangentially related things, which is as you've said what happened here. And thanks for addressing my comment is such a polite manner, especially after my snarky critique of your use of the word "cyberwar". Apologies for coming across in a negative manner, if you took it that way (except for the 'cyberwar' bit, I wasn't actually trying to be negative, I was mostly just confused about the comment's context).
pnathan 12y ago
> I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. Chuck's been around HN for a while, and has insightful comments frequently - that he posts this sort of "radical" comment implies that a non-nut is seriously considering it and quite possibly it's worth pondering as an idea.
- jack9 12y ago
  > that a non-nut is seriously considering it and quite possibly it's worth pondering as an idea. I would agree, but it would be a monumentally stupid way of trying to send encoded information into a foreign government, given the notice that is linked to. So no, it's not.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  >Chuck's been around HN for a while Yes, my comment was that I didn't get why ChuckMcM posted it in this particular context, not who he was. I've also been around HN for a while, not always under this username.

by jnbiche 12y ago

harkyns_castle 12y ago

I don't know, sometimes something in an article triggers another stream of thought or tangent, and its a comments section, and other people might want to discuss that. I don't necessarily agree with the comment (as I have next to no visibility of this) but certainly don't mind reading comments on it. Maybe I'm wrongly using the site!

tehwalrus 12y ago
FWIW, I come to Hacker News to read the tangents.
- Chronic30 12y ago
  Perhaps you should use www.reddit.com
  - tehwalrus 12y ago
    Hacker News has much better tangents.
jnbiche 12y ago
I like tangents on HN, too, and I like discussions. That wasn't my point. It was that the comment apparently misunderstood or didn't read the linked message.
jnem 12y ago
Is this comment itself not a tangent on a tangent?

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Obviously I can't comment on why things get voted or don't get voted on, my observation is that people upvote comments they enjoy or agree with and down vote comments they disagee with and/or would rather not read. But I can respond to your other question. > Did you mean to post elsewhere? No, I meant to post it here. The author, Thomas White, writes of losing control of his Tor exit node servers, not to this audience but to the folks who read the tor.user newsgroup. Robert, aka chummm, posted it here as being of interest to the community. His was one of a series of articles/notes being posted here that have described potentially state-actor level activity. And there has of course been quite a bit about the Sony hack in the news. I also happen to run a fairly large internet visible infrastructure which acts a weird sort of observation instrument for the network as well. I presume that Robert submitted it here because he felt it was interesting, and a number of people concurred with him. And after reading the article of yet another person finding themselves on the receiving end of external forces trying to compromise their systems, it crossed some vaguely defined threshold for me between crystallized a thought that has been tugging at my subconscious for probably a month or more. That being that the the number of and frequency of penetration attacks is noticeably higher now than it was before. Yet I don't keep some sort of threat index or anything, I just get to see the number of things my automated defenses have fended off, or the clusters in the datacenter. And I allow that it is entirely possible for the combination of lots of computer intrusion in the news cycle has combined with perhaps a lot of bored teenagers on winter break or something to create something illusory. But as this story brought that observation to the forefront of my consciousness, I thought I would share what I was observing here, in the comments people are making about this story.

jnbiche 12y ago
Yes, it's a very interesting post, and I'm glad it was posted here, regardless of how things turn out. Your comment/observation is also very interesting, but had little to do with the Tor issues. So I was confused. But I get sometimes things trigger tangentially related things, which is as you've said what happened here. And thanks for addressing my comment is such a polite manner, especially after my snarky critique of your use of the word "cyberwar". Apologies for coming across in a negative manner, if you took it that way (except for the 'cyberwar' bit, I wasn't actually trying to be negative, I was mostly just confused about the comment's context).

pnathan 12y ago

> I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. Chuck's been around HN for a while, and has insightful comments frequently - that he posts this sort of "radical" comment implies that a non-nut is seriously considering it and quite possibly it's worth pondering as an idea.

jack9 12y ago
> that a non-nut is seriously considering it and quite possibly it's worth pondering as an idea. I would agree, but it would be a monumentally stupid way of trying to send encoded information into a foreign government, given the notice that is linked to. So no, it's not.
jnbiche 12y ago
>Chuck's been around HN for a while Yes, my comment was that I didn't get why ChuckMcM posted it in this particular context, not who he was. I've also been around HN for a while, not always under this username.