I think that this concern is valid but there are deeper more foundational issues facing the US that have led to the sum of the issues mentioned in the post.
We can say that if this rotten support beam fails the US is in trouble but the real issue is what caused the rot in the first place.
The effective removal of regulations via winner bribes and a lack of enforcement plus the explicit removal of regulations, to reduce corruption and insider trading. AI is not required to create the systemic exploitations and they are far more efficient at extracting value than any AI system.
I think a better metaphor for interconnected economies is that of chains always breaking at their weakest link.
Sure, well done, your link in the chain didn't break… but your anchor is still stuck on the bottom of the ocean and you're on your spare anchor (with a shorter chain) until you get back to harbour.
Most companies don't really need the majority of React's power. There is room for a low to mid level complexity library/framework to fill the space that the majority of sites really need (like, that brochureware site should be statically generated and needs none of what React offers and the site that deals with dozens of requests per minute can be greatly simplified). What we need is a low complexity tool that has a fantastic DX. Of the many projects that deal with this none has taken hold in the way that React has.
One is the DX as you mentioned; eg Hugo is nice, but editor integration for autocomplete, warnings, etc is basically non-existent that I’ve seen. Templating is also really clunky relative to React.
The second is Reacts omnipresence means there’s usually pre-built stuff I can pull in if I just want to iterate fast.
The third is that typically the best way to get a low complexity and good DX static site generator is just to roll your own with only the features you need. They get a lot simpler when you aren’t dealing with an ever-expanding list of feature requests and usecases. You decide whether you want types or editor integrations or whatever by duct taping together a few libraries.
One thing it's doing is jacking up electricity rates for US States that are part of the [PJM Interconnection grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJM_Interconnection). It's a capacity auction price that is used to guarantee standby availability and it is [up significantly](https://www.toledochamber.com/blog/watts-up-why-ohios-electr...) at $270.43 per MW/day, which is far above prior years (~$29–58/MW/day) and this is translating to significantly higher consumer prices.
Yeah. We have been turning off old plants and not bringing on-line new ones the entire time I've been alive now. At best we've perpetually been renewing licenses to grant operation of old plants well beyond their original design lifetimes. Anything new is fought tooth and nail by practically every local community. Even solar and wind brings out the NIMBYs in force.
Every recent "datacenters are evil" news segment/article these days has a section quoting a few local NIMBYs talking about how they are opposing more transmission lines in their area for various reasons. Then these same folks (usually literally the same person) is quoted as saying that they are "for" investing into the grid and understands America needs more capacity - just not here.
It's pretty frustrating to watch. There are actually large problems with the way many local communities are approving datacenter deals - but people cannot seem to put two and two together why we are where we are. If everyone vetos new electrical infrastructure in their community, it simply doesn't get built.
Are they paying for electricity used by server farms. Or are they just paying more profits for owners of electricity producers? Do server farms get electricity below market price?
Ofc, possible long term contracts and options are involved in some of these markets. But there the option sellers would bear the cost.
This is a recurrent question and not just for servers.
In Europe it is constantly
>"why does the households of half of Europe pay for German unwillingness to have a good power mix? Why should anyone want more cross country or long range interconnects if it drives up local prices?"
Say Norway with abundant hydropower, they should by all right have cheap power. But reality is not so in half of the country because they're sufficiently interconnected to end up on a common bidders euro market and end up paying blood money for the poor political choices of countries they don't even share a border with.
Addition: this also creates perverse incentives. A good solution for many of the interconnected flat euro countries would love enormous hydropower overcapacity to be built in Norway at the cost of the local nature. This is great for whoever sells the hydropower. This is great for whoever is a politician that can show off their green all-hydro power mix in a country as hilly as a neutron star. But this is not great for whoever gets their backyard hiking trails reduced to a hydro reservoir.
But hey we do it with everything else too, "open pit mines are too destructive to have in our country, so we'll buy it from china and pretend we're making green choice. Globalism in a nutshell: Export your responsibility.
It's a supply-demand gap, but since the reasons for it are very apparent, it's completely reasonable to describe it as "consumers paying for [the existence of] datacenters".
I don't see how? It's much more reasonable to state "all electrical consumers are paying a proportionate amount to operate the grid based on their usage rates". This is typically spelled out by the rate commissions and designed to make sure one power consumer is not "subsidizing" the other.
In the case of your quoted article - taking it at face value - this means "everyone" is paying .02/khw more on their bill. A datacenter is going to be paying thousands of times more than your average household as they should.
I don't see a problem with this at all. Cheap electricity is required to have any sort of industrial base in any country. Paying a proportionate amount of what it costs the grid to serve you seems about as fair of a model as I can come up with.
If you need to subsidize some households, then having subsidized rates for usage under the average household consumption level for the area might make sense?
I don't really blame the last watt added to the grid for incremental uptick in costs. It was coming either way due to our severe lack of investment in dispatchable power generation and transmission capacity - datacenters simply brought the timeline forward a few years.
There are plenty of actual problematic things going into these datacenter deals. Them exposing how fragile our grid is due to severe lack of investment for 50 years is about the least interesting one to me. I'd start with local (and state) tax credits/abatements myself.
No, it's a lie. Consumers paying more because of data centers raising demand could be true, but that's not equivalent to them paying for the data centers' usage. The data centers also have to pay an increased rate when prices go up.
Data centers get commercial or maybe even industrial rates depending on their grid hookup and utilities love predictable loads. Those are lower than residential rates. If you're dishonest and don't understand the cost of operating a grid, you could say that's users paying for data centers. But then you'd need to apply it to every commercial/industrial user.
If the regular users were paying for data centers usage, why are so many of them going off-grid with turbines or at least partially on-prem generation?
In India, we have different energy consumption bands like 0-200kWh, 200-400kWh and so on. People whose consumption is in 0-200kWh pay less as compared to 200-400kWh and so on.
The lack of investment in energy infrastructure - especially dispatchable power sources and grid transmission - is finally coming to bite us.
Datacenters are simply the final straw/tipping point, and make a convenient scapegoat.
At some point you run out of the prior generation's (no pun intended) energy investments. Efficiency gains only get you so far, eventually you need capital investment into actually building things.
Yep, this is no different from any other consumption market showing up for power. The US has talked about 'brining manufacturing back' and while I don't see it happening, what did we expect that was going to do to the power grid.
One thing we should be careful about regarding calculations related to the larger set of "all data centers" vs only "GenAI" is that the data centers include all the predictive algorithms for social media and advertising. I, for one, would not want to misdirect ire at ChatGPT that really belongs directed at ads.
The site that is linked here is a site dedicated to the sale of the drug NAD so it is not objective on the topic of aging. Not trying to debunk anything but let's put on our skeptic hats here and be extra vigilant, given the source.
Regarding NAD, not the article but it pertains to the subject, I actually think it has promise and as an older person take NMN to very (like... WOW, very) positive result (an NAD precursor that is arguably better as it is used by the body to create NAD whereas the consumption of NAD itself via the digestive system is in need of study as the suspicion is that it doesn't make the journey very successfully).
The person she spent her life with died. She could have just been sad and lonely over that, not some lack of "identity".
I've been married for over 30 years and we both have our own independent identities and successes (as well as shared ones). We are still very close and loving. Neither needs the other to live but after so long our emotional involvement with each other is as deep and foundational as the roots of a great tree. Losing her (or her me) would be utterly devastating and how we identify ourselves has nothing to do with it.
There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable."
It is not accurate to claim "that's not a thing". Citing anonymous sources is a long established practice (in particular when it comes to law enforcement activities or potentially sensitive political reporting). The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, that's where an editorial eye comes into play, but it does fall under the category of normal journalistic practice.
Next the "Washington Game": there’s a grain of truth here, but it is overstated. Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading. Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib). Responsible reporting involves weighing a source's motivations as well as corroborating and contextualizing that information as accurately and truthfully as possible.
The author's dismissiveness oversimplifies (or mischaracterizes, if I am being less generous) the reason and function of anonymity here. They overstate the issue with propaganda and anonymous sources. Accurate in the sense that anonymity can enable propaganda (it has happened), it is inaccurate in its absolutism.
I feel like this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion and mistrust than it does into that of the truth and accuracy.
Citing anonymous sources is not established ETHICAL practice, it's corruption of the system. The roll of the journalist is to get sources on the record, not let them evade accountability by hiding behind anonymity. Anonymity is something that should be RARELY granted, not routinely granted as some sort of "long established practice".
What is the justification for anonymity here? The anonymous source is oath bound not to reveal secrets, so what is so important here that justifies them violating their oath to comment on an ongoing investigation? That's what we are talking about, if they are not allowed to comment on an ongoing investigation, then it's a gross violation of their duty to do so. The journalist needs to question their motives for doing so.
We all know the answer here, that they actually aren't violating their duty. They aren't revealing some big secret like Watergate. They are instead doing an "official leak", avoiding accountability by hiding behind anonymity. Moreover, what the anonymous source reveals isn't any real facts here, but just more spin.
We can easily identify the fact that it's propaganda here by such comments about the SIM farms being within 35 miles of the UN. It's 35 miles to all of Manhattan. It's an absurd statement on its face.
The article you cited does not agree with your assertions. It specifically tells you how and when to evaluate the use of an anonymous source.
If you don't ever use anonymous sources, many fewer people will talk to you. Being on the record about something that will get you fired, will get you fired - and then no one talks to journalists.
What separates actual ethical journalists from the rest is doing everything the article you cited suggests - validating information with alternative sources, understanding motives, etc.
You don't have to use every single source you talk to in your article though. Sure, I will grant my neighbor's dog anonymity but I won't include his opinion in my article at all.
One of the more sober assessments in this entire thread, and closely aligned with how I experienced it. It's not nothing to stress the fact that it was pretty far away from the UN and that it's not obvious why a case of SIM cards would enable surveillance (seems more like it would anonymize an individual bad actor). But a large part of this is completely unsubstantiated speculation that people are nodding along with, which, in my opinion, is showing a breakdown in the ability to comprehend logical or evidence-based arguments.
> But a large part of this is completely unsubstantiated speculation that people are nodding along with, which, in my opinion, is showing a breakdown in the ability to comprehend logical or evidence-based arguments.
This is how I feel about the NYT article. So much doesn't add up, and the more I read and investigate, the flakier it becomes.
Odd to have officials speaking anonymously about an investigation while the Secret Service is putting out press releases about it.
There's a possibility that some of the evidence in the investigation is classified and/or stems from classified sources and methods. If the scammers are mixed up in foreign counterintelligence type stuff (very common with Chinese and Russian cybercriminal actors) then things get murky and people might go off the record because the documents they're reading have classification markings on them.
One of the challenges here is that there are a lot of explanations that might be completely reasonable that cover all of the weirdness, but it feels like there's too much of it.
I think, if one wants to inform people, one should not claim things that require accepting the reasoning without thought.
So even if the NYT article weren't propaganda and all the claims were correct, it would still be problematic, since writing it in this way, effectively claims that things that look like propaganda are legitimate journalism and totally normal.
So even if it were correct, someone who reads it and begins to accept articles of the same kind has been brought into a state of not being to reason critically about reality, and creating that cannot ever be ethical journalism.
>Odd to have officials speaking anonymously about an investigation while the Secret Service is putting out press releases about it.
This is a bizarre new take that seems to be making the rounds. Not that they are right or wrong but they've been a staple of national security communication and reporting for as long as once followed the news, which for me is dating back to the George W. Bush admin. Glenn Greenwald in his heyday had a field day ripping apart credulous NSA wiretapping reporting that relied on unnamed officials. In fact I think he popularized the idea that the pervasiveness of such quotes was so widespread that they constituted a systematic problem with national security reporting. Not that I think it's necessarily a good practice but I wouldn't say it's presence in a story constitutes a "tell" that anything about the story is unusual.
I don't understand what's bizarre about it. When you're putting out a press release about something, you want the public to know about it for some reason. And the U.S. Secret Service met with a huge number of outlets and did lots of separate interviews about this particular takedown. A lot of self-congratulation going on in those articles.
And they try to tie the UN to this SIM card farm over and over in those official statements. Then there's this one anonymous source inside the New York Times article.
> There is no specific information that the network, now dismantled, posed a threat to the conference itself, Secret Service officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
So in the middle of a press conference and media blitz, including official posts on the U.S. Secret Service website, we're announcing this giant takedown, and then we have to go to one anonymous source to find out that there is no threat to the actual UN itself.
It could be that I'm the crazy one here, but that sure seems weird to me. Have you seen that kind of thing before?
The story has a number of technical problems with it, but there's a lot of other weird stuff besides this. I listed it out in a separate post if you want to go look.
Honestly the mechanism is missing. Having hundreds of SIM card or a physical device is not a conclusive proof of anything. Show us the attack vector - exactly how will this cause problem.
Judith Miller taught me that either the NYT is totally corrupt, or easily misled. It is completely reasonable to place almost zero weight on stories they report on "national security" from nothing but anonymous sources from the intelligence community.
No journalistic institution is perfect. And, there are indeed journalists who cut corners, tell misleading narratives, or are too credulous.
However, there have been important and sometimes shocking stories that have been told thanks to reporting based on trustworthy, anonymous sources. The Pentagon Papers is a textbook example.
You completely miss my complaint. Perhaps I was unclear. The Pentagon Papers is the exact opposite! Ellsberg actually shared the documents; there were literal "papers" involved in the Pentagon Papers. That's the "real evidence" I demand.
Off-the-record conversational, "I'd never lie to you" BS, from anonymous sources in the "intelligence community" is a lead to investigate, not a story. They weren't called the Pentagon Whispers.
And remember how quickly Powell’s “Yellow Cake” fairytale fell apart once they resorted to sharing the docs. The docs were fake! Actual evidence can be interrogated and disproven. While anonymous, evidence-free reporting is unfalsifiable.
It wasn't ever "Powell’s “Yellow Cake” fairytale". It was Bush-Cheney's. And the scandal is not merely that it was fake, but was publicly known to be fake in spring 2003.
The "Iraq tried to buy yellowcake in Niger" claims [0] were a story pushed by the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) which was set up Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz intentionally to bypass the CIA's assessment and stovepipe unproven claims in order to cobble together a casus belli. Powell refused to have anything to do with it. Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said it was BS. CNN reported it was BS. And on, and on.
And even at that, Bush still had to use Tony Blair's admin's name to try to inject the claim into discourse, the famous Sixteen Words in the 2003 SOTU "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Not Colin Powell. If you read between the lines of writings by Powell and others, he believed the neocons in the Bush-Cheney admin could not be deterred from taking the country to war on false premises; Powell was to that process like Robert Reich was to Clinton's NAFTA deal ("the train's going to leave the station whether you were on it or not").
Historians can decide whether Powell should have protested more strongly, e.g. resigning (as Tony Blair's Foreign Secretary Robin Cook did) and denouncing the thing, instead of playing along it at his UNGA address.
If Powell had not complied with Rumsfeld, he would have been trashed as completely as Major General Taguba for actually writing a full and truthful Abu Ghraib Report [1]).
So Powell volunteered to sell Cheney's lie to the UN, knowing it to be a lie, because he wanted to stay in power rather than tell the truth like Shinseki? If Powell knew it to be false, and presented it with his credibility, I see no reason to not call it Powell's lie as much as Cheney's.
That's even worse than I thought. But fits with Powell's history in Vietnam.
>Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib).
And what, pray tell, is the major scandal in this case? The source isn't alleging any impropriety or illegal activity. Anonymous sources are for stories which are being suppressed or lied about, not for investigations which have not yet publicly been announced due to pending litigation. If there's no obvious motive for why the source would want to be anonymous then all you're reporting on is rumor and gossip.
> The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it.
They should also have editorial standards that judge the quality of the information and then decide whether to even print it or not. In this case, without a second source, it probably should /not/ have been printed.
> What we consider before using anonymous sources:
> How do they know the information?
> What’s their motivation for telling us?
> Have they proved reliable in the past?
> Can we corroborate the information they provide?
> Because using anonymous sources puts great strain on our most valuable asset: our readers’ trust, the reporter and at least one editor is required to know the identity of the source. A senior newsroom editor must also approve the use of the information the source provides.
How do you know they didn't have multiple confirmations from different anonymous sources? Generally this is the case with high quality journalism (souce: dated a journalist).
"Secret Service officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity"
Their only stated source is "USSS officials" who bafflingly demand "anonymity." I would expect the reporter to tell those /officials/ they need to allow a direct quote or to provide another source; otherwise, their information simply won't be printed.
It's the difference between being a blind mouthpiece and being a reporter.
There could be multiple USSS officials. Also they don't have to tell you if they verified the story through other channels. In fact this is common practice in my experience (source: pillow talk).
They're USSS officials. Officials being the keyword. That a bunch of people who share meetings and prerogative in the organization are saying the same thing is not an indicator of information quality. In fact, I would take it as a negative signal, and would push _much_ harder to get actual detail or corroboration.
I agree. Like I say you have no idea who they talked to or verified the story with. Using the words in a story to justify an opinion, but at the same time saying the story is inaccurate is not logically consistent.
No well trained journalist would ever write a story like this without verifying the information in redundant ways. If they didn't do that then they probably already know it's fake and could literally write anything they wanted to support the narrative.
A) Well trained journalists and editors are not stupid.
B) If they write something false they already know it's false 99% of the time and are doing it for other reasons.
In light of A + B it makes no sense to rely on what is written in the article to support the idea that it is false or undersourced.
To me, the article is saying that an "ongoing investigation" is not a valid reason to grant anonymity, not that there are no valid reasons to grant anonymity.
Who is being protected from whom by granting this source anonymity? With your three examples it's clear, but not as much in this case.
Officials who are not supposed to talk about ongoing investigations, and might get fired if they do, but can't help themselves so they do it anyway under cover of "anonymity."
And honestly, probably everyone in a position to know, does know who the "anonymous" source is, but it's just enough plausible deniability that everyone gets away with it. They get to push their narrative but also pretend they are following the rules that are supposed to protect various parties in the process.
Meanwhile if I were on a grand jury and blabbing to the press every evening about an investigation, I could get in real trouble.
If that was the model that society adopted, the fine article would be among the set of data being censored. Robert Graham seems to be competent in his field but he lacks the pedigree that the NYT wants to cite. Even worse, he disagrees with those who the NYT turn to as matter experts: https://substack.com/@cybersect/p-174413355
Author kind of made me trust him about as much as I trust the SS on not exaggerating when he spoke as if only he is an authority because he has declared himself a hacker. I think I might have trusted him more if he said "I used to run one of these SIM farms back in the day"
> this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion
I think this is the mechanism of action that will lead to america's downfall.
algorithmic content has connected dopaminergic interest to extremism while simultaneously welcoming influence from both agents of neutral chaos and malicious destruction.
i am currently watching a schism unfold in my immediate family over the death of charlie kirk. if we literally cannot discern the difference between charlie and a fascist/nazi/racist because complexity and nuance are dimensions of information that do not exist, then we are destined for civil war.
you cannot understand vaccine safety, israel v palestine, russia v ukraine, or literally anything else by scrolling instagram reels. stop having an opinion and uninstall the poison.
In my extended family there's some government employees an auditor and someone in defense, and listening to them try to explain why the 'failed audit' fox news had their father ranting about as a reason everyone deserved to be fired by DOGE at the time and he was "loving every minute" was more nuanced and not good evidence for the conclusion he'd been fed was difficult.
Even in simple jobs I've worked there's always been something armchair experts don't consider that makes their quick fix "just do this" or "how hard can it be to do X" ignorant and irrelevant. But he was so enamored of Elon and "saving us money" he couldn't even fathom maybe his kids who are smart and have been in the industry for sometime might know or understand something he doesn't.
Later I asked him "What audit are you talking about?" And he said "Who cares, I know they failed and that's all I need to know." The brazen ignorance mixed with outright callousness masquerading as righteousness is not good.
It's possible the author is wrong, but one should consider the author's history and demonstrated technical proficiency, e.g., the programs he has written. Take a look at his code. He has been around much longer than "blogs" and "Substack"
IMHO, he is also proficient at explaining complex topics involving computers. If others have differing opinions, feel free to share
Anyone know where can we see parent commenter's code or something that demonstrates their knowledge of computers, computer networks or particular knowledge of "SIM farms"
IIUC, the blog post is not claiming there is no such thing as speaking with the press on the condition of anonymity, it is claiming that requesting anonymity for disclosing the existence (cf. the details) of an investigation into routine criminal activity is reasonable cause for skepticism. The blog post then explains why the author believes the "SIM farm" is a routine criminal enterprise, not something more
One does not have to be an "expert in political propaganda", nor rely on one, to question out of common sense why anonymity is needed to disclose the discovery of a "SIM farm"
That single paragraph is the weakest part of the article, IMHO. The other observations are quite well-taken, I think, including the observations about the experts cited in the article.
> Anyone know where can we see parent commenter's code or something that demonstrates their knowledge of computers, computer networks or particular knowledge of "SIM farms"
The parent commenter literally never questions the post's technical conclusions or assumptions. Why are you acting like they did?
The commenter appears to be trying to make a point about how the post addresses sources, tone, and confidentiality.
I think there is a bit of disconnect between people knowing what is possible and what people fear might be doable.
It's entirely possible that there are good non technical reasons for believing who was behind this while being technically incorrect about what it was that they intended to do.
Some of the more fanciful notions might be unlikely. Some of the evidence is only relevent in context. The distance from the UN is not terribly compelling on its own, the significance of the area of potential impact containing the UN is only because of the timing.
A state action might be for what might seem to be quite mundane reasons. One possible scenario would be if a nation feared an action suddenly called for by other states and they just want to cause a disrupting delay to give them time to twist some arms. Disruptions to buy time like this are relatively common in politics, the unusual aspect would be taking a technical approach.
"Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading."
AFAICT, the blog author never equated _all_ anonymous sourcing with propaganda. The blog post is not titled "The NYT is bogus"
Instead, the blog post discusses a specific story that relates to a specific "SIM farm"
It questions why _in this particular instance_, relating to a "SIM farm", the source needed to remain anonymous
But that is not the only reason the author thinks the SIM farm story is bogus/hype
Based on technical knowledge/experience, the author opines the "SIM farm" was set up for common criminal activity, not as a system purposefully designed to overload a cell tower
It is the later opinion, not the one about the NYT, that is interesting to me in terms of evaluating this "news" hence I am curious what similar experience the parent commenter may have, if any
After so many years of being exposed to it on HN and the developer blogs submitted to HN, I have become accustomed to dismissive tone and black-and-white, all-or-nothing, pick-a-side thinking from software developers, i.e., what the parent calls "absolutism", absence of "nuance", etc. Probably not a day goes by without some HN commenter trying to dismiss "mainstream media", making some nonsensical complaint about news reporting that they dislike
Silicon Valley is now intermediating the publication of these worthless opinions for profit: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and so on
But, like I suggested, if one reads the blog author's source code and discussions of programming and cryptography, then one might be more willing to tolerate some personal opinions about the NYT. Ideally, programmers would only comment online about programming, and not, for example, about journalism, but that's not what happens in reality
You are attacking a straw man to make your arguments which makes me question your motivations.
Nowhere did the substack author say that cinting anonymous sources is not a thing, which your wording is implying. They say that citing anonymous sources to discuss an ongoing investigation is not a valid reason.
Let's look at the guidelines for ethical journalism and they quote the NYTimes guidelines: anonymous sources... “should be used only for information that we believe is newsworthy and credible, and that we are not able to report any other way.”
"... journalists should use anonymous sources only when essential and to give readers as much information as possible about the anonymous source’s credentials"
Came here to post this. Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?
Claiming that anonymous sources inside an agency/administration is "not a thing" clearly betrays the fact that this person knows nothing about actual journalism. Heck even a casual NYT reader will know that they cite anonymous sources within the administration all the time! Just look at all the reporting about the Musk/Rubio dust-ups!
They do quote anonymous sources all the time, and, more often than not, those anonymous sources are leaking to the media to push their narrative, ie propaganda. The NYT is very clearly the puppet of washington insiders.
The “literal New York Times” doesn't exist anymore. This is not investigative journalism. This is just acting as the mouth piece for some anonymous government official.
They do quote anonymous sources all the time, and, more often than not, those anonymous sources are leaking to the media to push their narrative, ie propaganda.
Citation needed. The New York Times has very strict rules about using anonymous sources. It's not some scary, shadow journalism effort. They publish their rules for anonymous sources right on their web site. Google is your friend.
The “literal New York Times” doesn't exist anymore. This is not investigative journalism. This is just acting as the mouth piece for some anonymous government official.
Having been a reader of the New York Times for almost 50 years, I can say the New York Times hasn't changed that much. I can also say that I look at it with a much more critical eye than most because of my journalism degrees and decades of experience as a journalist.
A major problem with society is that some anonymous low-karma recent-joiner rando spews things on HN like "The NYT is very clearly the puppet of washington insiders" and people believe it for no reason other than it tickles the part of their brain that agrees with it. Not because of any kind of objectivity, analysis, proof, or thought.
To pick a nit, you are correct: This was no investigative journalism. This was a routine daily story covering an announcement by a government agency. If you don't know the difference between the two, then you lack the knowledge and understanding required to be critical of any sort of journalism.
> To pick a nit, you are correct: This was no investigative journalism.
From the NYT article: "James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, said that only a handful of countries could pull off such an operation, including Russia, China and Israel."
Using the agreeable expert isn't "reporting" its BAD journalism. It's WMD's all over again.
The links you posted do not refute my statement. So I ask, how many times have you read the New York Times? As I stated above, I've read it almost daily for nearly 50 years. Do you subscribe? Do you read it regularly? Do you even read it at all? Or just parrot what you've seen on the internet?
The remainder of your comment is a non-sequitur, and has nothing to do with what I wrote.
Both the BBC and the Guardian were reporting how fucked up it was, but NYT ra ra America fuck yea just went along with it. There were other us news orgs that spoke up but no traction.
And this is the thing. The NYT isnt doing reporting here. This isnt a presser they are covering where they are quoting cops and their claim on the street value of the drug sized. This is a "confidential source" whos narrative is then supported by a know insider but its made to look like its being fact checked.
Its not. This is not journalism, and if you want to make it that, then you have to admit it's awful. There needs to be a retraction, or better yet a mecupla and some interviews with real technical experts.
You're glossing over the fact that the journalist is not technical at all (she covers policy stuff) and so she can't be adversarial at all in the technical realm. But she's also not adversarial in any way I can see. Off the top of my head, from memory:
How can you get browsing history off of SIM cards?
If this case is historically large, how many other SIM farm cases as USSS investigated?
If this is so unusual and dangerous, why does McCool say there's no reason to believe there aren't a lot more around the country?
Why is the USSS only telling us about this the day of Trump's speech at the UN, when the SIM farms were found back in August?
What evidence do these experts have that this could have only been pulled off by a nation-state? Is it that it is technically sophisticated? Is it because it cost so much? Is it because the hardware can't be easily obtained?
What degree does this expert hold, and in what subject? They heavily rely on an "expert" that has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984. What did he study?
Is it even technically possible to have a SIM farm 35 miles away from a target and cause the towers to crash?
Why is the journalist for the NYT choosing to repeat statements about this being a threat to the UN when there is zero evidence this has anything to do with the UN at all?
Why are officials from the agency publishing the press release being cited anonymously?
I could go on, but there are so many pieces that don't fit. This was the first article I've read, maybe ever, where I got a very strong vibe of "This is U.S. government propaganda!"
> A major problem with society is that some anonymous low-karma recent-joiner rando spews things on HN
Not so sure about that. Sometimes the message is delivered in a sloppy way. I'm working here to not deliver my message sloppily, to show why simply disregarding what you read from a rando might not be the best.
> Not because of any kind of objectivity, analysis, proof, or thought.
News is a good source for facts. If they say the sky is blue, I would have no reason to doubt them. But if they say the sky is turning from blue to pink, and we should all be worried because this might be a sign of the end times, I wouldn't get up from my chair.
I found the focus on the source being anonymous odd as well. I think the correct lesson is that substacks have just as much propensity towards being propaganda as the nyt does.
> Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?
Uh, my recent experience is that "Some guy on Substack" is a significantly more reliable source than "The Literal New York Times".
Gel-Mann Amnesia affect applies here: every time I've seen mainstream media cover a subject that I have personal experience or expertise with, it's been shockingly inaccurate. This includes the NYTimes. It includes random guys on Substack too, but I've found that random guys on Substack when speaking about their area of expertise are actually pretty accurate. It's left to the reader to determine whether some random guy on Substack is actually speaking to an area of their expertise, but other comments here have attested that the author actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to SIM farms.
And what exactly makes "Robert Graham" such an expert in this particular domain? I don't know who this person is or why I should trust their personal blog over the NYT. The article itself is rather hand-wavy in it's assessment of the report. The thesis is essentially "bot farms use lots of sims & this is an example of using lots of sims, therefore this is a bot farm and not espionage."
BlackICE was a big personal firewall 20 or so years ago - you can read all the CNet/ZDNet reviews if you search for it. You can also look at his code (for a port scanner that can scan the entire Internet in 5 minutes, whew) on GitHub:
Thank you for sharing. I recall blackice. I'm not seeing anything here would lead me to believe he's an expert in this particular domain though, which is more about nation state intelligence operations than it is anything technical.
I think his point is that it's not about nation-state intelligence operations, and that the capabilities claimed here are garden-variety cybercriminal operations. You or I could set up something very similar, if we were willing to participate in a dodgy business.
And by some basic napkin math and a few Google searches, he appears to be right. Prepaid sim cards are about $5/each [1]. A 16-port SimBerry server is $499 [2]; their full-fledged servers are "contact us" for pricing, but support up to 18,000 SIM cards [3]. Assuming their enterprise solutions are cheaper on a per-SIM basis than retail, that's about $35/SIM in hardware costs. For $100K in startup capital, you can run a 3000-SIM farm. And then, like this article suggests, once you get started you reinvest the profits: if you assume each SIM card gives you 1000 txts, then if you charge 2c/txt your $5 investment becomes $20 and you can expand your operations accordingly.
I wonder sometimes if, when it comes to cybercrime, "[Russia/North Korea/China/Iran] did it!" is actually code for "The FBI has no idea who did it, but if we said that it would encourage all sorts of script kiddies to do this for profit, so we might as well blame it on our nation-state level adversaries." Many of the hacks in question (eg. ransomware) are not out of reach of a lone malcontent in their 20s with some tech skills.
Both can be bad. The NYT absolutely publishes some slop from time to time, and I'm inclined to believe this is one such occasion. But this Substack essay isn't a measured correction and has its own mistruths and exaggerations. In other words, there's a middle ground between total credulity and solipsistic nihilism.
Maybe on average, but we've also learned there are too many times when "The Literal New York Times" either repeats propaganda for money, or literally just makes shit up.
I also would appreciate an answer to this. It's one thing to say anonymous sources like to offer quotes when they can push a preferred narrative. It's another to say they straight up make things up, and this lazy attitude of reflexively accusing NYT of fabrication like it's the apex of wisdom seems to come from a place of not understanding their processes or history.
There's bias in the sense of selecting stories and editorial judgment, and narrative emphasis. But people have gotten way too comfortable just reflexively claiming stories are fabrications, which I think in truth is extremely rare.
There was one particular really important story a few years ago that massively affected global geopolitics, making a lot of people very angry, and they later admitted they just made it the fuck up.
I actually accept that as a legitimate example, and I do think that has important implications for the topic in question if we're thinking about something coming on its second anniversary in a few weeks. I don't think it's characteristic of NYT's reporting in other areas.
I know this is where you point to Murry Gellman amnesia but despite its fancy name I don't think I agree with its thesis, and in fact find it to be an incredibly damaging ethos in the misinformation environment we currently inhabit.
to be fair, most of the people who could give you an answer have probably been banned/shadowbanned from this website (this website has a very blatant zionist influence, as does NYT)
For some reason I feel like reporting fabricated evidence is magnitudes different than fabricating evidence (making shit up.) From what I've briefly read is that Judith Miller reported on evidence that Ahmad Chalabi provided her:
https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/
I'm not saying that the NYTimes doesn't have an agenda (it has one) nor do I believe that they are infallible. I'm just wondering when they've manufactured information like the days of yellow journalism or the likes of Stephen Glass or Janet Cooke
Correct. I got lost in the threads, and lost context here.
I have never heard of the NYT deliberately inventing falsehoods. They do have a history of credulously repeating falsehoods as truth to serve an editorial goal. I’ll grant that distinction.
Note that does nothing to defend the story in question.
I believe the story in question is overly hyped. I don't think anyone was planning on destroying the phone system. It seems like the secret service found a text spam ring and is trying to make it more nefarious.
This is exactly my situation (cooktop in an island with nothing above it). Our solution (because we cook a lot and often it's Chinese food with the attendant oil) was to just stick an existing rolling island in the garage with an induction hotplate on it and do our messiest cooking out there. Not ideal but it keeps the house cleaner and we didn't have to spend much.
Personally I would prefer a Chinese style kitchen with a fully enclosed cooking space (sliding glass doors to leave open if desired) and exterior ventilation. It keeps the worst of the aerosolized oil contained and away from the rest of the home.
The first point is about using an onSubmit event that is triggered by an onClick of a button. Why? Just add type="submit" to the button and the onSubmit event will be triggered by a click or by hitting the enter key. I'm confused as I feel like this is so simple that I must be missing somethng?
Every complaint about things like this can be fixed by the dev caring. There are cons to React, but they can all be mitigated. The ideal React app would behave like a plain HTML page, but with benefits to interactivity and development speed/maintenance.
The truth, though, is that most just don’t _care_ to prioritize this.
We can say that if this rotten support beam fails the US is in trouble but the real issue is what caused the rot in the first place.