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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

This story was interesting: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37735369

I don't see how to stop it though. For areas of the world with few economic opportunities, and little resources to chase you...the risk/reward profile is just too tempting.

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Wow. That's almost straight out of an episode of Black Mirror [1]. Looks like the episode premiered just days before the news story came out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_(Black_Mirro...

bizarre and an extremely brutal way of extorting money from people. The mob used to ask for protection money, if you refused, they'd fuck your store up.

but this is just fucked up and repulsive. it's sad how poverty can dehumanize people into doing inhuman things for money.

Inhuman things are done for money by people representing all parts of the wealth distribution.

You are very right, but there is _something_ to the theory that the availability of good jobs is a big factor. I've read a lot of cases where the FBI will capture Eastern European hackers by pretending to be an old friend of theirs, claiming to have been MIA for a while because they found a good legitimate job, and then inviting the target to apply. The target sends a passport scan as part of the application process and then gets arrested.

I think one of the biggest factors is culture. If you live in this "skype scam city" and all of your friends are doing it, then no one is judging you and you won't have too much trouble sleeping at night. On the other hand if you're in a very moral place you probably wouldn't do it.

Certainly, but again, ethically dysfunctional cultures are to be found at all levels. Lehman Brothers employees were in an environment where dishonesty and malfeasance was acceptable, so they felt OK about helping destroy an economy for personal gain. As will the Wall St financiers who create the next financial crisis ..

I remember reading online that to bait the valve half life 2 leaker/hacker to come to the US for authorities to capture, valve sent the hacker a phoney job offer. At the end of the day, all these smart tech workers want is to get paid for their skills.

https://www.wired.com/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/what-drove-one-half-l... (better story)

For the hacker types there are things like bug bounty programs where they could make money in a legitimate way. The story I linked to though is just regular extortion artists with no discernible skills. I'm not sure how you address that.

man I really got a new perspective on Gabe. Blatantly deceiving the German guy to cause tremendous harm to his life by colluding with the Gestapo even when Half Life 2 was a tremendous success and none of his precious monies were lost in the process, in fact the leak only raised the profile for Half Life 2 resulting in more sales.

I definitely won't be buying Half Life 3.

TIL Gabe Newell is actually very narrow minded and not a nice guy. Hacking and leaking is also bad but it's not clear that the action led to losses when Half Life 2 was a phenomenal success. It's the deceptive tactic of pretending to offer an olive branch and going back on your word. He should be fucking ashamed of himself.

Say someone broke in to your house, rifled through your stuff, and put pictures of your personal things on instagram. Would you not want to press charges?

I'm sure you can see the night and day differences. Gabe just got free PR exposure. He should've kept his fucking word and gave the guy a job but instead he got soft.

Tony Montana said it the best: all you really have at the end of your life is your word and your balls and how well you kept them.

Gaben did nothing wrong. Hail gaben.

The Gestapo? Really?

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