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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Based on what I've read there is a high chance he is from Moldova, and now works for one of the big IT companies. Probably in his mid 30s. Lives in US or Canada.

A few things point to it:

* He thinks Moldova is part of Romania. That is a contentious issue. He mentioned it specifically. To do so, they'd have to care about it a bit. Doesn't like the Russians it seems, that hints to it as well.

* He listed possibilities about how someone could be a hacker not just be part of the Russian FSB -- working for a multi-national IT company.

* Age based on what he considers are typical "cool" role models for this age. He listed Rambo and Terminator -- those were the typical boys' role models growing up in the early 90s in Eastern Europe (especially ex-Soviet Union).

* Cares and knows about DNC and specific candidates. Guessing they are following the election process, so probably live in US or Canada.

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I was struck by his correct usage of "its" and "it's". That is something many native english speakers do not get right. He clearly speaks and writes english very well or has someone editing his posts. That would agree with your suggestion he is living in the US or Canada.

That might be something that foreign speakers find easier to get right because they have to actively learn it, and the words are more different in other languages so they wouldn't confuse the concepts.

Absolutely, but in my opinion it has more to do whether you learn to speak before you know how to spell and write or vice versa. Homonyms or near homonyms like "it's" and "its" or "their", "they're" and "there" are just different things for second-language speakers. For me as a non-native speaker it's a miracle how someone could ever spell "definitely" the wrong way.

His writing lacks the typical mistakes Eastern Europeans often make when writing English prose, namely omitting the indefinite article. If you look closely he might be overcompensating, for example:

    I’ve already said about the software vulnerabilities

I'm not a native English speaker myself but isn't the article superfluous here? The next one is more obvious:

   But I made some conclusions from the Marcel’s story

Actually the article in "the software vulnerabilities" is pretty useful, since he's referring to the specific vulnerabilities that let him in to the DNC. You could potentially gather that from context, but to my native ear the article sounds better.

The second example is, as you say, an obvious mistake.

It's impossible to tell if someone is genuinely making mistakes or simulating them, but just from a surface analysis:

I don't think a native speaker would ever say "I've already said about..." - you would say "I've already mentioned/written about/discussed". "Said about" is glaringly, obviously wrong.

In the second thing you cited, I could see that being a typo / editing mistake - could have meant to say "from the Marcel story" or "from Marcel's story" and it got mixed up in editing (e.g sometimes you write a sentence one way and then paste something in and don't re-read what you wrote). But if it was intentional then yes, it's definitely wrong.

Non-native speaker here. I never say "could of" when I meant "could've", or "there" when I meant "their" or "they're". I don't understand why native speakers confuse them so much. Our brains must be wired differently because of how we learned to speak and write the language.

I'm a native speaker and I never make those mistakes.

I find it irritating when I read writing that includes those kinds of basic mistakes.

Of course, you even see those kinds of basic mistakes on the TV, especially the news tickers. I see about one per week, and I'm not even consciously looking for them.

I think it's people who have never read a lot, so they just write whatever sounds similar. Just seems lazy to me to not check, and after reading these comments from non-natives who can get it right, I now think it's super-lazy.

Spell checkers can pick up on its/it's errors

You would think though if he was living in the US or Canada, he would at least make a more up-to-date pop reference than Rambo or Terminator. If he was living in the west, he would probably at least cite Mr. Robot or some "betrayed" hero like Jason Bourne.

As the OP points out, this may suggest his age. I'm in my mid 30s and I have no idea what Mr. Robot is, but I certainly do know who Rambo and Terminator are.

Mr Robot is an excellent TV show [0], I highly recommend it.

0) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4158110/

Total tangent, but I can't recommend Mr. Robot enough, especially to the HN crowd. It is about a group of anarchists hackers that are trying to take down a global conglomerate. It might be the first critically acclaimed TV show/movie that goes out of its way to make sure the tech they talked about is accurate. You will see it as early as the pilot episode when two of the main characters debate the merits of their favorite Linux distros. And they do it in such a way that it is entertaining to both the people who know what they are talking about while not alienating the common folks who just hear it as technobabble.

I just warn you shouldn't read too much up on the show beforehand because there a lots of twists and turns in the first season that you won't want ruined.

He doesn't have kids. Before I had kids I had no idea what kids liked. Watched Batman, Lord of The Rings, but I still couldn't tell you who cool teenagers looked up to.

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