GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor | Hacker News Reader

GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

cloudsek.com

I was expecting them to want you to make a donation and send the receipt, but they want you to actually round up less fortunate kids and take them out for pizza. Bizarre.

Its definitely a cultural thing. The task would be extremely easy in any Indian city, but they probably don’t realize it would be near impossible in the West. Same with task 3, it would bankrupt Americans to pay for somebody else’s medical bills.

Or task 3 would also be impossible in a country with universal health care.

That was my first thought - the only logical way I could see for step 3 would be to pay for people's parking.

Universal healthcare doesn’t pay for everything. My friend in Canada has a boy with a rare disease and the out of pocket costs are significant.

Hey don't downvote this person! Pharmaceuticals, dental, vision are all things Canadians still have to pay for. It's a real shame.

I've never understood why dental care isn't included when you otherwise have universal healthcare. Why single out dental problems? It's about as impossible to just ignore having an infected tooth that needs to be pulled out as it is not doing anything about a broken arm.

Even countries with universal health care have private hospitals, they'll take your money. One near me asks you to consider paying for their services out of your retirement funds if you don't have private health insurance.

So change the premise of a person who cannot afford the treatment to cannot afford it in a private hospital? Hownto find such a person?

Probably the easiest of alln3 is to fly to some poor country and do the stuff there (supported by a local lawyer).

There are plenty of people who cannot get care at government hospitals in countries with "universal healthcare", because of waiting lists, because the government doesn't consider the treatment they need to be worthwhile, etc. You could easily find some of those people on crowdfunding sites, and the media occasionally writes about such cases. The problem is that paying for their treatment at a private hospital would be very expensive, unless the ransomware would accept a partial crowdfunding contribution.

Not true in Canada. Or the UK.

It exists in the UK [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_medicine_in_the_United...

In Sweden, where my opinion of the public health care is that it's useless (unless you're having a really acute problem), I've looked for private hospitals to get help from. No such luck! Finding a specialist to help you, no matter if you have money and are willing to pay feels close to impossible, at least for the things that I've needed help with.

I've never been bankrupted by paying for millions of senior citizens to have Medicare, but I have been bankrupted by my own health care expenses.

If the goal is to pay off some random person's medical debt, things become extremely affordable:

https://ripmedicaldebt.org

I think that, by law, whenever debt is sold, the person that owes the debt should have the right to buy their own debt at the sale price. The current system is full of moral hazards, and this would help level the playing field.

(Sorry to hear about the bankruptcy. That really shouldn't be possible, anywhere.)

It's only perhaps possible in the most desperately impoverished portions of Indian cities. If you think even moderately poor and above Indians are going to be OK with a random person picking up their children for a meal, that's pretty unlikely.

I encountered children begging for food and/or money in Delhi

Yes, I think that's captured by "the most desperately impoverished portions of Indian cities". Their parents have often sent them to beg, because the need is greater than that society's willingness to fill (vs. low income school lunch programs in the US that keep us from having that scenario). The blame for that situation is squarely on India.

But you don't have to go very far up the socioeconomic ladder even in India to get to a strata of the population who would not send their kids to beg in the streets. People there wish to protect and provide for their kids as much as anywhere else in the world.

> The blame for that situation is squarely on India.

This is a bit of a sweeping statement. Colonization has a big role to play here also. When the british left india the average life expectancy was barely 40. Many other former colonies struggle with poverty and the socioeconomic disaster that it brings along. India has improved since then but has a long way to go.

> This is a bit of a sweeping statement. Colonization has a big role to play here also

I agree completely. Colonization set the stage for many of the persistent struggles faced by many in the developing world. But colonial powers didn't teach people in India how to oppress their own people, even if they wasted no time taking advantage of and amplifying the pre-existing situation.

Today, when a country as productive as India (they are self sufficient in food production) still has large numbers of children going hungry, it suggests that there are serious issues with distribution of basic resources like calories. Yes, it has improved, but not nearly enough.

Also, the US is not orders of magnitude better in this way, since we have millions of children relying on "last-resort" food security programs - vestiges of the New Deal - that are under constant threat of being cut. Before these programs were enacted in the 1930s, children were indeed going hungry in the streets of the US, and it continued for a long time afterwards (and sometimes to this day).

If we didn't have these programs, I'm not convinced the situation wouldn't be more like India, since we have equivalent fundamental social ills that drive children into precarious hunger situations.

At a primary school in Utter Pradesh (a state in India) salt and bread (roti) was served to children as part of mid-day meal.

Then the state government did what any sensible government will do. They filed a case against the journalist for criminal conspiracy maligning the image of state government.

Since last few years it has become fashionable to call Indians who criticize the government "anti-national" as if nation = government.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/up-case-against-journo...

Yes, it's a situation with the far right riding the up-winds of economic growth whose foundations were largely put in place by previous center-left governments, and supercharging themselves with nativist/nationalist politics that victimizes their own minority populations.

And many others don't... even places that were brutalized by the occupiers such as Taiwan and South Korea (the Japanese Empire definitely played for the gold in the Imperial League when it comes to brutality against the natives).

If anything, the measurable differences between ex-colonies, when it comes to their current state, are maddenigly confused. People tend to forget that even smaller European nations were sort-of colonized, the Czechs and the Slovenes by the Austrians, the Slovaks by the Hungarians, the Serbs by the Turks, the Finns by the Swedes and later by the Russians.

And it seems that it mattered who colonized you. Long term, former Austrian and German colonies are doing okay, Hungarian less so (sorry, Hungarians, but it is true!), Russian and Turkish ones much less so. You can still see the difference e.g. in Romania, when you cross the former Hungaro-Turkish border, or in Poland, when you cross the former Russo-German border. Even 100 years of independence didn't erase the differences.

How long you colonized a place is important as well. Japanese occupation did not last very long and while brutal Japanese were not very effective at using their colonized subjects for any productive labor (they were too brutal for their subjects to cooperate).

Taiwan is a bit interesting because much of the migration happened post world war with the rise of the CCP. While Chinese presence there predates this wave, most ethnic Chinese there are migrants. The aborignese aren't particularly well off.

With regards to German colonies doing OK I'd like to point you to the African colonies like Central African Republic.

British occupation in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan broke down a lot of industries. For instance industries like Wootz Steel, Muslin which had a very long history were in effect dismantled as the British could not compete.

> During the period of Company rule, the East India Company imported British-produced cloth into the Indian subcontinent, but became unable to compete with the local muslin industry. The Company administration initiated several policies in an attempt to suppress the muslin industry, and muslin production subsequently experienced a period of decline. It has been alleged that in some instances Indian weavers were rounded up and their thumbs chopped off, although this has been refuted by historians as an misreading of a report by William Bolts from 1772. The quality, finesse and production volume of Bengali muslin declined as a result of these policies, continuing when India transitioned from Company rule to British Crown control. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslin

Would you call Croats colonized by Hungary?

Slumdog pizzanaire.

a bit dark, innit

There is no requirement to "pickup" any children. Easiest way to accomplish task 2 is to wait outside a pizza hut or kfc and ask families coming in if it's ok if you pay for their meal and take some photos to help with your situation. You can explain your situation to people if there are any questions and pretty much everyone will be happy to accept a free meal for your good deed. Free money with no strings is accepted by 99.9% of people in every country.

Only problem is, Pizza Hut etc are middle class plus in India, so any family going in will by definition not be the poor people the ransomware is trying to assist.

Yeah, the class differences are interesting. In the US, fast food is something that a lot of poor people rely on and the meals are cheap there.

When I grew up in early post-Communist Czechoslovakia, McDonalds was where the richer kids went and later bragged about. The menu used to be too pricey for a random Czech.

These days, fast food is comparably cheaper than it used to be, but still relatively expensive for the poorest fifth of the population. As long as someone poor can cook, they are better off cooking at home and only going to fast food restaurants on holidays or so.

There are often children begging outside of pizza huts. A staff member or security guard often is posted to prevent them from entering.

(I’ve spent a few years living in north India as a foreigner)

There are festivals in India where you invite neighboring children in for a meal and some pooja (worship rituals). I’d compare it to Halloween for westerners where the kids tend to come to you! Not every family is guarding their children from strangers too much

It is completely insanity. It starts by assuming that the affected user has or could ever be available to have facesomething, instasomething and whasomething accounts,

and that said user could ever be convinced to open some,

and that said user could access them on a machine apart from the infected.

They are completely bonkers.

Why is it impossible in the West? (I don't stay in the West)

I think one of the truly bizarre issues with helping the less fortunate is that many affluent people don't want to be seen helping people on the street. They'd rather discreetly put money in a box for "someone else" to do the "dirty" work.

...and also... Charity is a thing to do _discreetly_. One would never brag.

That's a cultural thing in the UK. The rules are different for the famous, where you can influence the behaviour of others by publicly endorsing a cause; but for private citizens, to boost about their good deeds? Frightfully infra dig

Arguably the value in potential change of the rich interacting with the poor is immeasurably higher than the meal itself's monetary value.

I think if I needed to do this in a UK community where I wasn't already known then I'd speak to a MP/councillor and say I wanted to fund them having a meal with X poor families so they could hear about their struggles and such.

It's actually an interesting challenge.

You could probably donate '5 family pizza dinners' to a school in a poorer area, eg for a school fair.

I'm what is known as a white devil these days: white, male, single, rich. If I were to gather any number of kids I have no affiliation with and take them to dinner, I would probably get arrested.

We similarly did this at a hackathon.

> Droplock is a tool to help you when your laptop is stolen... The thief is prompted with an option to donate to charity (through JustGiving, another BattleHack sponsor) or pay the laptop owner directly via Braintree. If they fail to take one of these options, the laptop gets locked down until payment is made.

https://dropbox.tech/developers/droplock-a-dropbox-hack-wins...

I can see a younger version of myself making something like this and intentionally letting it slip to the media for attention. I th8nk this line is telling: "Since there are no known victims/ targets for the ransomware group, their Tactics, Techniques and Procedures remain unknown."

I don't think there's a risk if any great outbreak here. A bunch of scriptkiddies took some open source project and modified it with some silly instructions.

Alternatively, I could see this used in one of those scam calls. They set up remote accesslike normally and then months laltrr the6 infrct their victims and the "trusted Microsoft technician" gives them a call to steal even more off their money. This time there's an actual piece of malware that gets removed, solidifying trust in the scammers even though they were the ones to infect the victims in the first place.

Don't be dismissive of script kiddies, they can cause a lot of chaos, and often do it because they feel like no amount of self education or self improvement will improve their chances of stable full time employment.

(Hence many of them operating out of the former USSR.)

I’ve met tons of script kiddies over the years and none of them were concerned about employment. They do what they do just to show that they can.

I was thinking the exact same thing, as former (and reformed) lightweight teen hacker. My motivations? Employment? More like for the sheer joy of discovery and fascination with working through ideas. And maybe the slightly sketchier teen hackers: lulz.

It's not enough to notice that something's possible. You have to do it for a good laugh and show your friends. Sorry, Valve.

I just wanted to know what was out there, and most importantly what actual aliens looked like. I cringe now.

That was one thing that became pretty apparent with smartphones - those blurred "photos" of UFOs were scams. If they weren't, there would be tons of high quality alien vehicles footage available by now.

I'm not sure about that. I have a pretty good phone, but I still can't take a decent picture of the moon, so I'd have no hope with a suspicious airplane-sized light in the night sky. The cameras are optimized for selfies and meals.

>I cringe now.

Why? They look that scary?

>I’ve met tons of script kiddies over the years and none of them were concerned about employment.

Your sample is probably biased in some way. I've met many who feel trapped in wage slavery, here in the USA.

agree. the freelancer / gig economy is dominate by script kiddie / template churner companies in India for whom $2/hr is a good wage. there's no competing with that

this is a feature, not a bug, of globalization. Work that can be done in cheaper countries is allocated there.

On a related note (and I get negative feedback whenever i say this, but) this is the future of all software developers as i see it. If you can do your entire job remotely, then "remote" is going to get optimized over time.

It does not make sense to spend your time in USA (for example) coding when you can stop at developing the specs and send it overseas to be coded for half the cost or less. Architects dont lay bricks, and brick layers dont need to understand architecture. Accumulating knowledge of many different types of syntax for expressing the same principles is something that is only going to depreciate in value over time.

"Just" sending it overseas to be coded is more likely to end in failure than success, unless you have a lot of experience and know what the pitfalls are (which is a very expensive education). I'm not picking on developing countries; the same goes for big enterprise contractor providers in the U.S. They have no incentive to write stable, maintainable code. Their incentive is to make it just stable enough to not get sued and get it out the door as quickly as possible. An employee that will have to live with that code for several years will focus on maintainability purely out of self interest if nothing else. As to whether overseas firms are able to undercut domestic firms, it's a possibility, but anyone that has dealt with time zone issues and cultural barriers most likely knows what they are sacrificing to get that discounted rate.

Why wouldnt an overseas employee have all the exact same incentives and challenges to maintain their code as a more local remote worker?

I think you are assuming I was implying overseas work to be all short-term contract work but I am not saying anything about the paperwork. The paperwork will write itself such that the relationship between a remote worker and the company is identical whether they are in texas or india. And itll happen that way because of financial incentive to do so

It's already happening. People from NY and CA are moving to Texas and Georgia, and then their salaries are being reduced to adjust for cost of living - but they still make really good money for Texas or Georgia. Maybe those SWE think they are irreplaceable, but what they have effectively demonstrated to the company is that the work itself can be done entirely remote, and so when it comes time to replace them - they will look for a cheap remote worker. Maybe today it is tough to find good replacements in India, Ukraine, etc, but over time (on the order of 1 generation would be my bet) those replacements will be much easier to find over there.

> when you can stop at developing the specs and send it overseas to be coded for half the cost or less.

Good luck with that. Please, do try it and report back to tell us how it went. My prediction:

No matter what you do, the spec will be incomplete, and if it's large enough, it will contain contradictions. The culture of not questioning superiors in many of "overseas" will make it hard to notice and only after substantial time without progress someone will realize the problem. That person or group of people will start communicating with clients and overseas to work out the problems in the spec, accumulating additional overhead. The changes and additions to the spec will render a lot of work already done unusable, so the overseas team will have to start from scratch. Then, they will work on the code, while you will be wondering if they're working or not. If it turns out they do, sooner or later they will provide you with some results. The result is going to be pretty bad, because competent people don't want to work for $2/h, no matter where you go. But you will get some result, and will begin testing it. You will discover a lot of bugs, and then you will have to fight tooth and nail to have them fixed, because nobody will want to take responsibility for the failures. At this point, the project will be a year late, and will have flown past all reasonable estimates in terms of required funding. In the end, you're forced to contract consultants - you'll have to sell your kidney to pay them - who will make the product barely-usable some 2 years after anticipated launch date.

Yes there would be logistical issues if we tried to actualize this future today, rather than allowing it to naturally progress over time as I stated. Foreign culture is irrelevant, as you can bring people in to train them on-site and then let them go back home to work.. or send someone from here over there. Also remote workers will evolve to meet whatever is necessary to make the arrangement work because the financial incentive is HUGE and isn't going anywhere.

the point is that lower cost of living areas will promote remote work to transition there from high cost of living areas over time. The pandemic already showcased this.

Youre right that the end result will probably be worse than what we have today, but that will not stop it from happening. they will figure out how to be good enough

I agree with you in principle but having worked a lot with cheaper contractors overseas, in practice you are often wasting time and money.

yes today. overseas is still behind on raw skill. they will catch up, and SWE does not promote complicated work - it does the opposite. it promotes the simplest code that works, because that makes it easiest to maintain.

I think AI will do a better cheaper job before your vision of the future comes to life.

i like that bet, I was ignoring AI in my observations. The server running the AI will probably be cheaper overseas all the same though

We'll have the benefits of servers hosted locally but all staff will remote in from overseas.

I suspect you've never been a technical liaison to an offshore team. I believe your vision is to replace all satisfying work with soul-crushing work. If all your work is done by people who don't want to work there, including the supervisors, then what kind of quality can your company expect?

>I believe your vision is to replace all satisfying work with soul-crushing work. If all your work is done by people who don't want to work there

I am hesitant to believe what I think you are implying here. Do you think everyone in cheaper countries would prefer to live in more expensive countries? Even if provided a stable income far above everyone in their area?

I also dont know what would be soul-crushing? It's doing what we do here, just over there.

Yeah, so the details really matter here. A lot of people hear "In country X they live on $2 per day," and think that you can experience the same standard of living in that country as you do in the US. But that's really not the case. Even in places that enjoy a relatively high standard of living, while things like food and rent are cheap, all the things that are imported from the developed world cost exactly the same, and it just means that people can't afford them. Everyone may not want to live in America, but they all want to have the luxuries we enjoy, and which are enabled by American salaries.

But standard of living isn't really the reason someone would be miserable at work -- the real thing that makes this a bad arrangement is loss of agency, both for the off-shore contractor, and for the supervisor. This is where I accused you of not having done this before, because in my experience, and several friends' experiences, working with lower-paid, lower-experience software teams is extremely frustrating.

As others have pointed out, coming up with specs is a frustrating and unsatisfying process, and is akin to writing code, except that you don't actually get to run the code and see the fruits of your labor. Because of your working arrangement, the people actually making the product don't have the agency to take ownership of its architecture, and instead you get a whole bunch of copy-paste. If you push back and say, "no, this isn't what we agreed to," then they push right back and say that your requirements are unreasonable, because they don't have the expertise to architect the project right.

But suppose you decide you don't care about architecture, because that's what expensive people do, and you're hiring cheap people, then what's the harm? They can do things their way, even if it's less efficient, right? Except that now the team living with the bad architecture is responsible for fixing all the inevitable bugs that come up, and every time a bug is "fixed," another bug pops up somewhere else, and you, the supervisor/customer, are now responsible for all of it. You can keep filing the bugs, but you can't fix them yourself. Or maybe you can fix them yourself, but you can never improve the overall design, because your decisions will always be overridden by the copy-paste brigade doing the "real" work.

It's a world where all the code bases are awful and nobody gets any job satisfaction.

I think you're right about the state of leveraging over seas labor today, but the gap is so large between life over seas and life for SWE in USA that I have no doubt that a middle ground can be found to put SWE in USA out of a job once overseas experience reaches a satisfactory threshold. There is a lot of negotiation to be found between $2 and $50 per hour.

If nothing else, Land Price will be a big driving factor. If both sides have equal budget for commodities and investments, overseas wins on home budget.

>off-shore contractor

this does not need to be a contract arrangement. The person hired overseas could be hired indefinitely to support the product, with typical transition plans in place. same as today with local workers.

>coming up with specs is a frustrating and unsatisfying process, and is akin to writing code, except that you don't actually get to run the code and see the fruits of your labor

We might be operating with different levels of "specs". I am not saying you need to tell them exactly what to write.. it would be the same as a manager talking to a subordinate at a tech company today. You tell them what needs to be done and they have the skill and autonomy to do it.

I agree that this arrangement does not work with low-experience overseas workers. However, the point I am trying to make is that I think overseas experience will catch up way faster than the local need will become more complicated. So even if local employees maintain a lead in skill and experience, overseas does not ever need to catch up to them - they only need to catch up to necessary qualifications. Local people can offer more, sure, but this is a field that discourages over-engineered solutions. That implies there will be significant diminishing returns on all the extra skill local employees provide.

Again, this is not the case today because the lower experience workers are not just lower experienced but too inexperienced in general. Some time in the future they will still be lower experience, but they will be experienced enough. the only question is when, which is a gamble, but i think soon. On the order of 5 - 20 years would be my bet. It already happens but is a rare exception to the rule - so that timeframe is how long for it to become a common occurrence.

I love it when people come to me because their big spender investment in bottom dollar software they splurged for on fiver is failing and they're in panic mode. Like what did you expect performing an act of labor exploitation, a working machine? Loyalty?

Most I’ve known do it for the lols. This trait makes them really bad at holding down a good job.

I question the bias of your sample. Almost every one I've known who possesses any self-taught coding knowledge has gotten there specifically because they don't buy the "wage slavery" narrative and wanted a valuable skill. I'm from a very low income community and family so I imagine that if the type of person you're claiming exists were so predominant I'd have run into at least a few of them.

You can find my sample in a website called zone-h.org where most of them used it as a playground lol

What do you expect when the world is run by criminals? Seriously!?!

Look at the people who make laws, they dont have the intelligence or morality to even teach a TL;DR to everyone at school. Talk about set up to fail!

And when they upgrade the laws they dont even inform each and every member of the public, let alone let the public debate whether its a good law or not.

Democracy is the ultimate criminal act because people are tricked into having laws forced upon them by a small minority of criminals who decide what is best for you. Democracy is parenting of adults.

And yet the stupid keep holding up the law as an example of righteousness without knowing ALL the laws. What is the definition of stupid? A law abiding citizen.

So what would you have instead?

A fully participatory democracy where every citizen votes on everything? Or authoritarianism?

> A fully participatory democracy where every citizen votes on everything?

What like Switzerland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy#Refere...

This a thousand times. The more nefarious hacks are done by state actors and professional groups.

For script kiddies, it's mostly for the lulz.

> I’ve met tons of script kiddies over the years and none of them were concerned about employment. They do what they do just to show that they can.

Even worse: when I was a kid trying to hack around everyone had some (probably false or based on rare occurrences) where the hacker/script kiddie would get caught but employed for their skills instead of prosecuted.

This is the story of how Jono met Dug Song and started Duo!

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/19/how-hackers-dug-song-and-jon...

They certainly can cause a lot of chaos. In fact, I'd say that most malicious chaos normal internet users may be subjected to is done by these scriptkiddies.

Theres a difference, though, between an extensive ransomeware attack and an experiment by a bunch of amateurs. The chance of key recovery is much greater if there are dedicated criminals behind the attack, but amateurs also don't get the widespread reach that the media coverage might suggest.

I think the characterization of scriptkiddies as hopeless people is a bit romantic. I was something of a skiddie when I was young and I think a lot of their behaviour can be attributed to teenage recklessness.

The former USSR certainly has their fair share of scriptkiddies but they're around in every country. When the USSR was still around, the west had its fair share of phreakers that developed into the hacker subculture and established the code of honour that evolved into the cybersecurity communities of today.

What if this ransomware infects a hospital ? Then it can kill people.

What if a group of serious hackers infects a hospital... that place should probably be pen tested substantially

They are pen tested. Now same question, what happens when the ransomware infects a hospital?

Has happened before.

Responsibility always lies on those who created the malware.

But also on hospital IT if they didn't take precautions.

> But also on hospital IT

Hospital IT soaks in a special set of impossible choices.

Vendors lock them to insecure OSes and inflexible contracts. Regulations are equally inflexible. In general, security is in tension with providing patient care, especially in emergency situations. And all this stuff is super expensive, which means making do with old gear in a lot of places.

I am in no way defending incompetence. But the reality is grim.

Yea it’s not like a MRI machine you bought only uses Windows XP

Their ability to hold back infrastructure updates for old but still functional equipment is government tier.

Sorry but I was being unclear. The MRI machine's supplier designed it using Windows XP and they don't offer anything else. Sure it should be either airgapped or networked on some type of VLAN / quarantined by outside access but that's not my point.

What if the moon were your car and Jupiter your hairbrush?

I suspect that much of these "former USSR script kiddies" are actually the kleptocratic Russian regime.

I don't dismiss. And while I don't specifically encourage anyone to do anything illegal, script kiddies are probably on balance a good thing. That's just free pentesting.

(This is part of my broader idea that "cybersecurity" will remain nearly entirely impotent until we figure out a way to inject real liability. When something breaks, someone needs to pay or be punished. It's that simple. Perhaps start with Microsoft.)

Maybe not even script kiddies, there are (allegedly) Ransomware as a Service organizations now.

You have a hell of a typo:

>laltrr the6 infrct

*later they infect

I guess I must've missed the autocorrect suggestion. Too late to edit now. The curse of relying on modern tech, my mobile typing has become lazier as autocorrect learned to understand me better...

This thing was written by someone who doesn't live in a developed country... There's no way to do those actions in a developed country. Does this person think that just random children are available to be given food to?

Seriously. If I went up to a group of kids and offered to take them to pizza hut I think I’d probably be arrested.

Yeah, that’s going to be a hard one to explain…

The English is non idiomatic. Mistakes make it seem middle eastern/central asian

The article claims the writers are Indian.

Strange. We never write "in Facebook". It's always "on Facebook" in most Indian languages. Though it's possible it was just a mistake.

People generally accept free stuff. Kids aren't some exception to this. You can accomplish this in any developed country with minor effort imo. Have any kids even distantly in your family? Kids know other kids so ask them to invite friends. "less fortunate" is a very broad descriptor for the children you need to feed, especially if you're fortunate.

Depending on the context you could probably give away pizzas pretty easily/innocently. Walking up to some children you do not know and offering to take them to a secondary location in return for free food… would come across very differently

> Walking up to some children you do not know and offering to take them to a secondary location

heh yeah and some kids are very well trained to defend themselves. An offer like that to a larger than average pre-teen or teen may result in way more than you bargained for. If they see you as a threat and the flight/fight coin toss lands on fight, well, you're in for a ride.

Hey want to go get some free food at this public and safe place you've been before with all your friends for backup? Checks out ok.

At my youngest child's elementary school, I could pick random kids to give food to and have an 80% chance of them being disadvantaged and/or food insecure. The only tricky part would be contacting their parents to get permission and/or get the parents to come along, and that would be manageable.

Arguably I don't live in a developed country, but it's a US state...

As a fellow parent of children in your school that's possible for you yes in your specific situation, but it's not possible for most people. However even then I doubt you could grab a bunch of the children and take them out for food without negotiating with their parents first.

Do you mean US?

I don't understand your question. This doesn't work in the US either.

exactly. People who need money at the hospital to get treated? Oviously targeted at Americans and other 3rd world countries

It doesn't work for America lol... I'm in America.

I think your comment says a lot more about you and your knowledge of the world than them.

Welcome to HN, where suburban America is the only developed country.

This is true in any developed country.

Let's crowdsource this :) Please give examples of countries where it would be feasible to pick up five random kids and take them to Pizza Hut without having the cops showing up. I live in Sweden and my feeling is that this is absolutely not possible (but it might just be me who have preconceived notions).

I don't understand your point. Do you think poverty is something far away in 3rd world countries only? Your point is probably moot in countries with strong social welfare systems, but the USA for example has 16% of its children living in poverty. I live in a VERY well-off area in the USA, yet one of the local food banks I'm somewhat connected is frequented by a lot of families with children. Non-perishable food + kids clothing + school supplies are one of the most sought-after donation items.

No my point is that it's culturally impossible to just grab someone's children and take them out for food. They're not out wandering on the streets like they are in the world that the writer comes from. It's not a matter of wealth or what not, it's just culturally wrong and impossible.

Ring up your nearest orphanage, offer to pay for a pizza party.

Getting permission to post photos of kids on social media is probably the hardest part.

> Getting permission to post photos of kids on social media is probably the hardest part.

This shouldn't be too hard, just ask their parents

yea about that...

I stay in a developed country (Singapore) and random children are available to be given food to.

Has anyone actually completed the three demands and gotten their data back? As the requests are so bizarre and I'm so cynical it seems more likely they just want you to do silly things after destroying your data.

If word gets out that fullfilling those requests does not get your data back, no one would do it after the first attempt.

For a no profit hack, honoring the promises would lead to funnier/more interesting situations.

Wouldn't an anti-ransomware group then hack some people, take their money, but not return the data, thereby undermining their real enemy, the ransomware groups?

>Since there are no known victims/ targets for the ransomware group, their Tactics, Techniques and Procedures remain unknown.

This is probably obvious to anyone but there isn't anything "good" about this, I expected this to be something along the lines of a crypto donation to GiveDirectly but this is just a sick wannabe Blackmirror power play.

It's the specifics that give it away. "Take 5 poor children from your neighborhood to Pizza Hut."

Screaming kids at Pizza Hut aside, we can't make other people have empathy. They have to find it and explore it themselves, perhaps by seeing others do the same.

It's especially ironic that someone with lowered empathy would be demanding someone else show fake empathy publicly before giving them back control of their own computer.

Can't make people have empathy, but you can make them carry out empathetic acts over and over again through blackmail with this ransomware.

Is it empathetic if you don't mean it?

Yes, an act can be empathetic even if the person doing it doesn't feel empathy. For example, smiling at another person is an empathetic act. Sociopaths do this all the time without feeling actual empathy for people. It makes it easier for them to blend in if they seem to have empathy via empathetic acts however disingenuous they may be.

-- to nitpick -- empathy is the ability to put yourself in someones position & truly feel what their reality must be like -- compassion is acting on that empathy --

It doesn't actually require having empathy to commit empathetic acts which are acts that display empathy. For example, smiling is an empathetic act, but it doesn't require having any actual empathy to do it. Sociopaths can smile and commit other empathetic acts to appear to have empathy without having any true empathy behind it.

-- not disagreeing with you! - just talking to the linguistics - the distinctions here are interesting :=) --

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/compassion/definition

That’s just charity not empathy

I just can imagine how I'd convince 5 kids to go to lunch with me, without outright kidnapping them. This sounds like Black Mirror material.

Convince or not, I'm thinking you might attract some really personal attention from law enforcement by the time you made your pitch to the 5th kid.

Or maybe you happen to be a 97-year-old retired nun, who everyone in your neighborhood knows, and it'd be fine. Not trying to be judgemental or anything.

The demand is indicative of where the author lives: think where in the world it would be acceptable for a stranger to approach children under 13 and invite them to lunch at a restaurant.

Not necessarily even a stranger per se, but poor communities are often "closer" to each other. They (sometimes) depend on neighbors for help more than rich neighbors do. Many of the kids play outside because they don't all have ipads and playstations keeping them inside, many adults walk to the bus/subway and interact with the kids in their neighborhood every day. So, I can see how a well known neighbor might splurge on a treat for some of the kids in their neighborhood to brighten their day.

wouldn't taking 5 poor kids to a pizza hut be an act of sympathy and not empathy?

I think the approach is clumsy and overly constrained, but I would hope the idea was that by being forced to actually interact with neighbors and their families it would increase social cohesion and empathy.

I don't think that's particularly incorrect, isolation from neighbors and the invisibility of the poor makes it a heck of a lot easier to ignore their problems.

I'm not sure in this case it's sympathy or empathy, it sounds like mere facilitation of the potential for future relationships and dialog between poor kids and people well enough off to own their own computer.

Imagining these hackers trying to individually determine whether someone has done a good enough job of pretending they're nice and whether a victim is themselves too poor to do this stuff... pretty amazing that they'd declare themselves the arbitrators of whether something is sufficiently repentant.

And posting it on social media? What, are we doxxing ourselves now to get out of ransomware attacks? I don't even have twitter or facebook or instagram or whatsapp... for good reason! Why make it performative, someone could just send them receipts if the goal was to help regardless of publicity.

Pretty sure that being forced to do things typically increases resentment, not social cohesion and empathy.

Sure, sometimes. Certainly against the people applying force.

I am definitely not suggesting this approach will help, it seems like a ridiculous solution that's all about exploiting performative compassion for the sake of the hacker's egos...

But I also disagree with your statement as a blanket claim. Kids are forced to go to school and while they'll be resentful of the system or their parents or their teachers I haven't really seen kids being resentful of each other and certainly their peer group develops social cohesion and empathy for one another.

Everyone forced to do community service doesn't necessarily resent the people they are helping, they resent the judicial system.

At least, that seems like the rational response to me, it would be incredibly petty to resent some kids you take to dinner just because you're doing it due to blackmail. Resent the blackmailers...

A "sick wannabe Blackmirror power play" is a little much.

This is probably the cheapest ransomware unlock that's ever been put out there (unless you're based in the US, then good fucking luck on the medical care clause). If you're a company whose security policies are too terrible to survive a ransomware attack, then you'd rather be hit with this one than any of the others.

Right. Picking up random children from the street and taking them to a restaurant comes at almost no cost. In fact if anyone sees this and calls the authorities they are likely to give you free lodging and food at a state owned facility top of it :)

Again, this is mostly an American problem. In other countries you know your neighbours and local community and wouldn't have a problem feeding hungry kids.

Right. I see that happen all the time in Canada, the UK, and even Germany. I think France has a national “Take a Strange Child to Lunch” Day, too.

Hungry kids are only a problem in the U.S?

> In other countries you know your neighbours and local community and wouldn't have a problem feeding hungry kids.

This is probably only viable in smaller communities where people know one another, which may or may not show something about the authors of the malware. It's not just a social "issue", but rather one of population density, where you end up not knowing almost anyone around you personally.

Approaching random people, worse yet, kids, with promises of food in any metropolitan area or even moderately sized city would be viewed as exceedingly weird and creepy. Source: Eastern European country.

I get what the malware authors were trying to do, but it sounds like a somewhat naive and perhaps detached from reality implementation of a "sort of positive" idea.

It would have been way more viable to understand that payments for scammers work because they don't take hours or days of mucking about, but rather a payment through whatever means are available - which could also be applied to making the people affected donate to any number of charities of their or the authors' choice.

I can see a scenario in which a "chaotic good" hacker uses a customized form of ransomware on some large corporation or extremely wealthy person in order to force them to make a donation or do some majorly positive action for the world.¹ Pulling this off without going against the "good" qualification would require appropriately selecting the target and files to encrypt, and appropriately phrasing the demands made to that target: you want to choose a target that has a lot of unused money to give, you have to make sure that the files tied up are not things that other, more disadvantaged people would need, and you want to make sure that the requested positive action is both positive and not reversible by the other party after the fact.

Needless to say, deploying the ransomware discussed in the link would not be a chaotic good act. More like neutral or chaotic evil.

¹ And just to be clear, don't actually do this. I'm never going to do this, never have done this, certainly am not doing it at the moment, and I advise that no one else actually do this. There are better ways to use your time.

> "do some majorly positive action for the world"

What can Jeff Bezos do more positive than creating Amazon?

What can Elon Musk do more positive than creating Tesla and SpaceX?

etc. etc.

/s?

Do you honestly think Amazon isn’t a net positive for the world? Even ignoring how useful AWS is, Amazon.com is incredibly convenient.

Have you lived in a world pre-Amazon? Supermarkets are horrific.

> What can Jeff Bezos do more positive than creating Amazon?

Donating

LoL. Where does he donate hundred billions to can create something like Amazon? The federal government spend 10billions every day.

Maybe it's not about "creating something like Amazon" but rather helping people. There's more to "positive creations" than companies, in fact, if you asked a random person to rank "making Amazon" or "donating to charity" in terms of positivity, 9/10 would choose charity..

Creating Amazon is helping people, billions of people. If you don't understand this, this discussion is pointless. Let's just forget about it.

I do understand that. You asked what more could he do. It is factually true that donating would be an additional positive impact that he would have on the world. If you don't understand that, this discussion is pointless

I assumed the "goodwill" would be a donation to an association that would be a front for the hackers to get the money somehow, but it seems that it's really acts of goodwill with no real money flowing, so maybe the hackers actually believe they're doing good ?

Maybe, but it sounds too difficult, why not just force people to pay in XMR and byebye.

I mean charities could open up crypto accounts; since it's a public ledger, the ransomware operators would be able to see the transaction.

Being forced to donate would just result in refunds. The current way they're doing it, there's no way to refund.

There are charities who accept donations in crypto. We donated future royalties on secondary sales for some of the things we did at SXSW to Action against hunger for one example.

> We donated future royalties on secondary sales

So you donated nothing?

Charities will "accept" nearly anything because turning down donations is bad publicity and people barely need a reason at all to turn on a charity. They don't want it though and will offload it as cheaply as possible. Often this is a minor cost center for some charities lol.

If you say so. That certainly didn't seem the case for the charities we spoke with when we did our research. Quite a few were not set up to do this, but the ones we chose did seem to want the donations.

That said, that's orthogonal to the point. The GP said charities could set up crypto wallets to accept donations and as I pointed out, some already have.

My mother does consulting for non-profit fundraising departments, and I've helped her with her business on several occasions. Charities regularly turn down or ignore weird donations if they are not concretely 6+ figures.

Most of the places my mother has helped have gift processing employees (the folks who take in the findings and figure out the tax credit to the donor and figure out where in their ledgers it fits) who are not able to keep up with their work load. Which, to be completely honest, most of the time is because the gift processors aren't really that good at their job, but it is what it is (entry level job, low pay, high turnover, etc). It's basically a closet-space problem, though. If the gift processors are more competent, the whole operation is usually more competent, and there's more work per person, so it comes out in the wash.

So weird gifts like "residual royalties on secondary sales" are likely to get ignored. The harder it is to put a rock-solid, today-dollars value on a gift, the more likely it is to get rejected or just ignored and never actually processed, sitting in limbo where the donor thinks they've gave but there are no actionable funds for the org to spend, because it's a huge tax fraud liability waiting to happen.

Maybe someone should trace the flows and look for conflicts of interest.

Wouldn't any legitimate charity return money that was donated through coercion? If someone stole something and gave it to me, and the rightful owner asked for it back, I would give it back. I guess it would just look bad asking for them to return it but most people would understand.

I guess “it’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message”.

The malware group is not asking for donations to organizations, but to individuals at the hospital. They are requiring that someone at the infected business records videos of themselves going to a hospital or health clinic, looking for people who seem like they need financial help and offering to help them pay for their medical care.

1) Good luck suing poor individuals to get your money back 2) It's hard to fathom what kind of asshole you'd have to be to walk into an ER, record a video of you offering people money to help pay their hospital bill and then demand that money back off-camera.

> It's hard to fathom what kind of asshole you'd have to be

I don't think you picked up on who this asshole is in this situation

That just sounds like campaign season.

I imagine you'd explain before recording what is going on (assuming you don't just fake the entire thing with some friends), rather than doing anything as silly as suing anybody. It wouldn't take more than a token amount to get people to participate. A lot of people wouldn't even want money. They'd get that this kind of blackmail is horrible and help you out.

What happens when a poor person gets this virus?

Is there a way to prove that you own an old bank account with X money in it? Or better, to be able to exhaustively list your bank accounts and their respective amounts? Well a salary bill pay document should be enough though if not falsifiable.

I expect not. Actual government agencies have trouble with that kind of thing (for taxation/fines/judgment enforcement); random hackers have no chance.

Likely in the world context of the ransomware creators, 'poor person' wouldn't own a computer

Take a video and post it to your social media account. So… what would someone like me who doesn’t have any social media accounts do?

I had the same thought.

They are assuming a completely made up reality where they mix up an invented target with all potential victims.

Hah, Black Mirror-esque.

But well, hopefully it has a IP filter to not hit countries with universal healthcare. /s

And asking stranger kids "Hey kids, want some KFC?"... that should go well. "The hacker 4chan made me do it!"

Even in countries with universal healthcare, people regularly can't afford treatment because expensive treatments aren't included.

What kind of treatments? How regularly?

All kinds, very often.

They aren't outright denied, just backlogged for years. Need a hip replacement in the UK, and you're a smoker? Good luck trying to get it within a year.

Because it turns out that healthcare is a service, and just making it "free" doesn't magically make it immune to scarcity.

While in Brazil a person very close to me suffered a very destructive paranoid psychotic crisis. We've tried help from the public healthcare but their earliest waiting time was 1 month. I've slept for days at the door because she was convinced there were Russian cameras and radioactive emitters planted at our house and wanted to run away. That person stopped to eat and bath and wasn't thinking rationally. We couldn't wait a month.

It was the worst time of my life. I had to pay a private psychiatrist to treat her. A very good one - we plotted together a plan to partake on her fantasy and administer a risperidone injection which was super effective. She is fine now and visits said doctor once in a year only.

Sure you can go to a general clinic but the doctor will forward you to the proper specialist queue which might take months or even years.

In the Netherlands I once sought an eye treatment for my wife. The local hospital only had a waiting time of 2 months. So I called my insurance company who then found another clinic ~45 minutes away by public transport in some small village, which had a waiting time of 2 days. Everything (besides the bus ride) was still covered by the public insurance system.

> What kind of treatments? How regularly?

In the UK there is a department called NICE which uses health economics to understand how to best utilize the funding for the national health service to best improve health outcomes (generally measured by increasing QALY or Quality-Adjusted Life Years, but there are multiple measures in reality). This means that if there is a £500k treatment that could save the lives of a 70 year old, but there is a £1m treatment that could save the life of a 20 year old, and there is only budget for one, it would go to the £1m treatment because it has the biggest impact on QALY.

So the treatments that don't get approval are usually those that have a poor return. Note that it's usually the whole treatment that gets approved / denied rather than particular patient (or it is approved for a particular subset of people).

The other issue is capacity - so for instance, if there is only a limited capacity to perform MRI scans, then triage is required.

As an American, that's just disgusting. The government shouldn't decide if your parents die.

The free market should decide. If you created enough shareholder value then you'll have enough to pay for their treatment like God intended.

I'm hoping this is sarcasm.

It is indeed

I know this is tongue in cheek, but all these countries also have private health options, so it’s not really a genuine argument against it anyways. If you were too poor to afford good coverage in the US, you wouldn’t be able to afford the private coverage in other countries either, but for rich people, private insurance is easily obtainable, for relatively cheap too, since they compete with “free”.

It's worth mentioning that in the UK you can still pay for private treatment, and thus avoid any queues. You can also buy insurance to pay for private treatment.

A few countries forbid this, including Canada.

Universal healthcare is well overrated in the US.

From a country that had it, it usually means: ugly hospitals, sad faces, long queues for treatments (I mean wait time for "free" treatment can be well over a year).

There is no free lunch.

On the other hand, I usually can get my kid to doctor same day, while using private healthcare provider (paid by my employer) it is almost impossible, 2-3 days wait.

On yet another hand, to get registered to my local doctor I need to use phone and start calling when they open up (8am) - sometimes I can't get to registration. The private healthcare has a normal website where I can look up registrations - so it is less time consuming (and automateable to some degree).

Private hospitals are rare here, and most of real work is done by public ones. Because the hospitals don't have enough money, they e.g. don't provide separate meals for people that need them (e.g. you had a digestive tract operation), so it is up for the family.

Good thing recently is that if your kid needs to go to hospital, there might beds for parent to stay with the kid (I'm not sure if that is that common in all hospitals)

Good for you that your employer pays for it.

I think universal healthcare is a social must and we need to fix it instead of talking it down.

I think the right solution is the middle - private primary care and public chronic & advanced care. India does this but loses out on effectiveness because of capacity problems and simply the huge scale it needs to work at.

Primary care is provided by private doctors and hospitals, so it is almost like a business. Doctors offices have websites, and get reviews from general public. You choose where you go to. All health insurances cover almost all of them. The doctor's offices are "competing" to provide a good service - being clean, solving problems correctly, not charging too much etc.

The government spends what ever money it allocates for healthcare on Public hospitals that focus on expensive medical equipment(labs, diagnostic machines etc), and treating chronically ill patients.

In an ideal world, you go to private doctors to figure out what is wrong, and then use the public facility if you can wait, and get the surgery/medicine/treatment for free. Often times, the private doctor refers you to a public doctor with a specific note that says this person needs this particular surgery using this particular medical device.

However, this systems leaves a big hole in catering to the poor who cannot afford to go to a private doctor for primary care owing to costs. No system is perfect. I think this model has the most potential for better healthcare.

I think a good entry point for making public healthcare better would be making each doctor visit require a small amount of money. E.g. $1 or $5. This way people that go to doctor just to have a talk (because they are bored - yes that happens in public healthcare, because it is free so people abuse it) would free up the queue for people that really need the visit.

AFAIR there was such proposition in France some time ago, I don't know how they solved that.

I live in east Europe in a country with public healthcare (our system even considered to be in bad state). However if I have to choose between spending the saving of my family and spending a week or a month in an ugly hospital, I choose the latter without thinking. The doctors doing the healing are the same, the quality is the same, only aesthetics differ.

There are problems with puclic healthcare that needs solving, but I would much rather focus on thoose problems than pumping insurace companies with money so private hospitals can charge 10x-100x the price of a treatmant (compared to Europe for example).

Coming from Canada, and having had multiple large surgeries and hospital visits over the years, I've had an entirely different experience. We have universal healthcare and some of the best hospitals in the world. As well, the NHS in the UK is consistently ranked among the best healthcare in the world. I have experienced just as long wait times at U.S. hospitals as I have at Canadian ones, but with honestly far worse service as it felt like the doctors were trying to get me out of their sight as fast as humanly possible.

Private healthcare in the UK would have many of the problems you identify with the NHS if it couldn't pass anything difficult to the NHS.

In Germany my aunt gets expensive cancer treatment without extra pay.

Any specific you think about?

Meanwhile people have to pay thousands of Euros to maintain their teeth if they need root canals or prosthetic dentures and such. Maybe you're just not old enough to know?

Btw the "free" tier system is a joke in Germany. Waiting months for an appointment is the norm for anything more serious than a cough, unless you're privately insured which all the rich people and interestingly civil servants are. Tells you a lot when those working for the government don't use the public insurance themselves.

People may be surprised to hear that someone with a medium income (by EU standards) can get better healthcare in Africa than in a place like Germany. Or at least for now, the ANC is working hard on destroying the private healthcare sector in SA.

I have to visit a few low key specialists: Neuro etc. And while waiting is true sometimes calling around helps.

The teeth problem I'm aware of and find it quite unfair indeed.

Nonetheless cancer doesn't make you poor in comparison to the USA.

Still something which has to be fixed in Germany.

But you still have the option to go private if you want.

Do you have personal experience with fully private heathcare systems in other countries? I ask because reacting to criticism of your system with whataboutism concerning the US is not rational, that's a fallacious argument.

As for the US I'm not an expert but my gut feeling is that people compare apples to oranges just like with most of these international comparisons. Cost of living is much higher in the US first of all. Things are simply more expensive in general and American salaries are a lot higher for anyone moderately educated. No one I know who's moved to the US has any problems with insurance, they can simply afford it.

Now if you compare a government sponsored system in Germany with private insurance in the US, of course the former will be cheaper (be careful though, some of the real cost is hidden). But like mentioned you also get completely different treatment. Cost in the US could likely be cut by making the service worse. If you want to pay even less, have you looked at the Chinese system? Germans are massively overpaying in comparison to the PRC and it's ruining the middle class. /s Gotta sinophy your healthcare with 10 Yuan TCM pills for cancer treatments. Because cheap is apparently the goal when it comes to healthcare.

Btw, here's the kicker if you want to discuss price: With the top notch treatment you get in private South African clinics, people still pay less for their private insurance over there than the government mandated low quality one in Germany. I know because I've used both.

There were articles of people from USA with proper jobs taking a deep dive after cancer.

The critisism is coming from USA to.

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/krank-und-ruiniert-schu...

>The critisism is coming from USA to.

Dumb people exist in the US too - color me surprised. It's not about defending the US healthcare system, I'm sure there are enough issues worth criticizing. However almost every time one sees such reports it turns out the people were simply under-insured or outright uninsured if you actually bother to look at the details and not just the headline. So in Germany you have similar high bills, people are simply ignorant of this because the true cost is socialized and the tax payer pays for it. Have you never wondered how a fully privately insured person living a comparable lifestlye at the end of the month still has more disposable income in the US compared to Germany?

You can't be underinsured in Germany at least for critical thing's.

The bills are smaller. USA is paying a high price for their health system. This one is statistically shown.

My grandma got a million dollar cancer treatment over a few years, multiple surgeries, chemos, meds, dozens of appointments.

We paid for TV and parking(and we could have gotten free taxis to the hospital/doctors appointments but she didn't want to ride with a stranger...)

Are you talking about 3rd world countries?

I'm thinking of New Zealand. We frequently hear of people who can't get some expensive treatment because it's not funded by the government. Can you say for sure that every medical treatment available in the US is funded by your government? Will they even fly patients to the US for specialist care if it's not available locally?

Like in the UK, teeth are considered luxury bones.

I've never understood this. Not attending to an infected tooth can, for example, spread to other parts of the body, ending up with you having a heart attack or something.

> And asking stranger kids "Hey kids, want some KFC?"...

This is not donating to the poor.

From the article:

> Activity 2: Take five less fortunate children to Dominos, Pizza Hut or KFC for a treat, take pictures and videos, and post them on social media.

It's one of the required activities to allegedly get the decryption key.

Judging by the English it probably is where the authors of the malware are from. It's probably a cultural disconnect issue but there are places in South America, Asia and Africa where you could do this and it would be a big deal to those kids. Often people bring boxes of chocolate in their luggage to hand out to children when they vist these sort of places.

In the US places like that exist as well but under 13s aren't just hanging around to invite out and feed.

While the action may look creepy and KFCs definitely not the healthiest choice, it is donating. You are donating food to someone hungry.

U.N. World Food Programme is a better choice. You won't be accused of Comet Pizza atrocities, though to QAnon anything U.N. is a problem.

You’re probably just helping poor people acquire diabetes faster. In the USA poor people are more likely to be fat suggesting food access is not a problem.

Access to quality food is a problem. Unhealthy food is far cheaper than healthy food.

Perhaps but it’s really that fat people eat too much. If you’re going to eat a rich meal then limit the amount you eat. Don’t drink soda all day. Avoid snacking all day.

It’s really an issue with personal responsibility more than food choice.

People associate fast food and lower quality food with type 2 diabetes, but Type 2 is associated with excessive carb intake. More expensive food often has just as many carbohydrates.

If someone's really hungry ordering them a meal in KFC is better than them not eating anything.

No one's going to get that type II from a Zinger or two.

Black Mirror meets Mr. Robot.

An interesting reality nevertheless.

With a dash of fight club. It reminds me of the scene where Tyler puts a gun to Raymond's head and makes him go back to college.

or script kiddie meets open-source? or the dark side of open-source perhaps?

Mr.Robot is incredible show, Sam Esmail, Rami Malek and Christian Slater potentially created the top series of the decade, but this is not the reality.

Agreed with Mr. Robot part 100%.

About whoever is behind this ransomware, of course this is nothing "fsociety-level" though the general intentions (hacking powerful ones and changing of powers) gave me a similar vibe.

Forcing me to help people at ransom isn’t really going to make me feel good about doing it.

> make me feel good about doing it

I don't think it's the goal.

Would helping them with their grammar count as an activity point?

Can I assume that the author of this ransomware is American or at least is very immersed in American culture? Because the activities listed sound very America-centric. I've never seen someone actually sleeping roadside in the cold, and since we have universal healthcare, I've also not heard of someone dying in the hospital because their loved ones couldn't gather up enough money.

I guess I might as well just smash my hard drive with a hammer if I get this.

> I've also not heard of someone dying in the hospital because their loved ones couldn't gather up enough money.

It's more like "having to postpone treatment so long that it doesn't work."

The same also applies if you have to fight with scheming insurance companies.

The government, all of us, have most to gain from a healthy society. And a dead person couldn't care less about their health. It's about time our systems reflect that!

Well, the way that "activity" here is phrased, they kinda expect you to lurk in the nearest hospital for some kind of a medical emergency that can be solved with a bank transfer. The people postponing treatment probably aren't loitering in the hospital.

It seems to come from India, though the only identifiers seem rather weak. I'll admit I know little about poverty in India, but all three seem possible there.

Doesn't India still have universal healthcare?

Again, I'll admit I know little, but the answer seems like "sort of." Wikipedia says 23% of people can't afford treatment, and hospitalization forces many of people into poverty or lifelong debt.

>I've also not heard of someone dying in the hospital because their loved ones couldn't gather up enough money

Am from a country with universal health care. It's not uncommon to die waiting for treatment or there simply not being any way to get the treatment in my country. Raising money to visit the US for treatment is a pretty common thing here as a result.

And in the USA if you don’t have insurance and are dying you’ll be treated. They act like dead poor people are piled up outside of hospitals. They’ll even discount you to 0 if they see you’re really poor.

I wanted to mention something like this, but I felt like my experience is too limited to be sure. My impression is that in the US, the cost of care will lead to people avoiding seeking treatment for things that don't appear urgent. Sometimes, those things are actually urgent and they'll be worse off for waiting. But in cases where there's a clear, urgent need for care, they'll rarely be denied treatment outright. Instead, they'll be burdened with debt afterwards.

Which is better in most cases than the rationed care of government healthcare, where people die waiting for "free" healthcare.

Here's the missing words: 'well funded and well implemented' universal healthcare. It is possible as the stories listed here indicate, and it works when done right.

Blaming poor implementation is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

What does not work is a system where all things are private and everyone is at the hands of the market. That is something one of the richest countries in the world has shown us over and over and over again.

It's true that ERs don't turn people down, but some hospitals would be happy to treat someone but also send them a gigantic bill which may or may not eventually be waived. Speaking from experience, often people put off obtaining medical care because they fear large bills and financial ruin.

> Can I assume that the author of this ransomware is American or at least is very immersed in American culture?

No, they sound like someone who learned about the US from internet memes, but doesn’t have firsthand experience. For example, hospitals in the US do not generally collect payment at the time of treatment so it wouldn’t really make much sense to show up to one and try to pay for someone needing urgent medical care

Urgent Care facilities do. One time I badly needed a minor surgery. I went to an urgent care and was told they could see me immediately, but didn't accept my insurance and would charge $450. My other option was to go to the hospital across the street which did take my insurance, but I had to wait 8 hours and be treated like I was an opiate addict with a self inflicted or imaginary condition. So, that would have been great if someone somehow showed up and paid the first clinic.

Can I ask why you need permission or care about assigning a nationality in the first place?

Also, the opposite of your country is not America. Aka just because you don't observe something in your country doesn't make it automatically American.

"I want peace on earth and Good Will toward man"

-- Whistler

Robin hood.

Yes, this is obviously what it should have been called.

That would also be stealing a product name from the rich (Robinhood Markets) and giving it to the poor.

Is the use of ngrok here a common pattern? First I've seen ngrok used this way, but I don't super follow methodologies/tactics.

Ransomware GoFundMe. Cute, but still criminal and laughable completely unscalable as a way to address social issues.

What if you're poor yourself? :(

I spent perhaps too long figuring out how the thrift stores launched a ransomware attack.

Honestly, I'd rather just pay the money directly than do all of this BS.

I've been predicting the rise of 'good clans' and 'good mafias' for some time. IMO, as governments become more corrupt, good people will be forced to join clans which adhere to their principles for survival. Power will shift towards clans, mafias and hacker groups.

very typically it is clans/mafia that corrupt the governments. such claims that mafia/clans are better than governments are very short-sighted and childish by nature.

What happened is that all the bad clans which produced no economic value have corrupted governments and are now using it to extract value from the good, value-creating citizens. Most of the bad people are already rich.

Good, value-creating citizens never had to consider joining a clan before because they were able to easily capture profits from their own labor without much extra effort on the value-capture/extraction side (they could focus purely on value creation)... But as this is becoming increasingly difficult to do, they will be forced to join their own clans to ensure that they can capture more of the proceeds of the value which they created. Since it cannot happen naturally as it did before, it needs to happen via explicit political means.

You can think of workers' unions as a kind of clan... This is happening everywhere in the economy now and IMO, it will only get worse as governments become more extractive and corrupt and as it becomes more profitable for people to spend their time and energy engaging in extractive activities rather than productive activities. The degree of corruption and aggression within clans will have to keep rising to match the corruption and aggression of governments.

While I agree on most points made here, It still struggles for me to understand this boundary of us-them when it comes to government. I AM the government when it comes to policies I create/support/empower at university, municipality, my circle. There is no straight line between society and government really.

I was thinking it's somehow related to Goodwill Stores, the brand

Taxation as a service?

What if their victims are already poor?

I've wanted to do a micropayment/paywall system where all the money went to select non-profit options.. paywalls, but not for the host. Paywalls for the world (hunger, climate, etc). Could possibly even have a crypto funnel.

Very Black Mirror

The ends justify the means - does this ever really work out?

1000% approve

everyone so fucking noble these days...even a hacker is mr.right

lololol

robin hood.exe

Tangentially, I dislike strongly when people record videos of themselves doing "goodwill" for others—especially for social media; it always reeks [to me] of insincerity. Not to mention the often unwanted spotlight it casts onto the receiver of said goodwill. If one cares, one does acts of goodwill privately, without thinking about how others will react—including and especially—on the internet.

"The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching." ― John Wooden

edit: taming em-dashes

100%. Amen to that.

I've read somewhere that all donations that Paul McCartney makes come with a rider that if his name is leaked, the donation is withdrawn.

Regardless of whether this is true, I think that's the way to donate if it comes from your heart.

There is nothing less charitable than threatening a charity. If that rider is true then he is a jerk. The only reason to do that is because he wants the charity to congratulate him, yet keep quiet. If he wanted to make an actual anonymous donation then he could do so though a shell company. But no, he wants them to see where the money is coming from so they can shake his hand and smile at him for his benevolence. Want to be actually anonymous: cash in an envelope in the donation bin.

"Oh, the best charity is to give and not let other people know.

But what if your example encourages others to give?"

I've personally been inspired by seeing these acts in real life. I don't get the same feeling when the person is holding a camera phone in the face of a bewildered recipient. Sorry.

See also, "Extremis", modern Doctor Who series 10 episode 6 [0]:

"Only in darkness are we revealed. Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis."

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6340130/characters/nm0524240

IDK, my family was poor and had no concept of charity.

The first time I donated something was after a friend shared a social project they helped in LinkedIn. That was when I thought "hey, I'm kinda wealthy now, I probably could help.".

So, I understand where you are coming from, influencers and shit, but there's a real chance that by doing any charity publicly you might trigger others to do as well.

I think the difference is whether you’re sharing that you donated, or parading around some disadvantaged people for your social media followers. Making a hungry person chose between a meal and their dignity isn’t charitable.

I think the primary reason for this reaction is not just the inclination to be suspicious of virtue signaling when it's too obvious, but the fear of social pressure these public displays of charity might cause. We don't want to have to feel like we're forced to imitate.

That's totally fair but then we also complain all the time that media is only filled with negativity and despair. Let's be rational and appreciate public displays of good deeds for what they are, good. If some people use these as a distraction from mischievous deeds on the backside, that's an other matter.

I actually think the complete opposite, there is so little good in the world that doing it to boost your ego or getting viewers on YouTube it's as good reason as any, and it can influence others to do the same, we learn pretty much everything by imitation, why would being good be any different? That guy who went viral for recording himself picking tons of litter without doubt made thousands of people think before littering and his actions have had a more positive impact than most people on this site.

I only had to sleep in the streets one single cold night, I wouldn't have mind in the slightest to be filmed thanking the helper in exchange for a warm room, I definitely would had feel I got the upper hand on such "deal".

There's a channel on Youtube called Jimmy Darts, he gives out $500 to random people or whoever he deems they are poor. Lot of silly little tasks but you know I enjoy watching the content and people who really need the money get it.

If somebody wants to also build a hospital and plaster their name on it, let them! As long as somebody benefits.

Great video saitarizing that concept by New Zealand sketch comedy group Viva La Dirt League. Worth a chuckle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lfXpKX0Ww0

What is next? Be healthy ransomware? Forcing people to exercise on camera, for keys?

Now you're giving them ideas.

Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.

I think there is an untapped market for people willingly paying some people to watch/monitor them achieve their desired goals consistently. It's similar to beeminder and bodydoubling or r/GetMotivatedBuddies except it would be much more effective because of professionalism. On beeminder there's not check if you being honest/accountable. On GetMotivatedBuddies you generally find unreliable people AND you must coach them too. On bodydoubling websites, people are watching each other but there's generally not interactions, just eyes. And no professionalism.

The one that will build this will enable a disruptive market where people can finally become much closer to their ideal self, by the effective means of social pressure, real-time e-coaching and monetary incentive. Does this actually exists?

Wouldn't you just create a Twitch account for this?

My new startup: on demand deepfake exercise footage of yourself.

Needs more blockchain.

And NFT!

Upload videos of you eating vegetables 3 times a day for a week. I'd also like to see a walk-through of your pantry to make sure there is no sugary soda there.

Sickos: Yes, ha ha ha, YES!

Isn’t this more-or-less how Chinas social credit score works?

"I found that, ironically, common sense isn't all that common around here"

Ah, the comments here never cease to provide amusement.

This is a government backed outfit which is demo-ing it's abilities.

If only there was universal healthcare, than we wouldn't need private entities coercing individuals to forfeit parts of their paychecks to pay for strangers lifestyles, the government would have rendered that service obsolete! Another win for the free market?

Taxation is coercion. Higher taxation is higher coercion.

With that being said, the US already spends more on public healthcare than Canada does, so the problem is a lot more complex than where should the money come from.

Patching bullet holes is expensive.

You can just as well say that property is coercion. Like I get that you won't agree, but you are asserting a value system when you do that.

taking something with the threat of force is not the same as owning something that you traded for in a mutually agreed upon transaction

My point is that it's perfectly valid to argue that ownership itself is coercive.

I don't think you understand what coercive means

If multiple people want to own the same thing, how do they "decide" who gets it?

The owner of the thing decides to keep it or trade it. If there are no owners, then anyone can take it and it's not coercion.

There still needs to be an initial act of taking by force to set up the initial ownership, creating the possibility of trade.

No, there doesn't. You can own and trade something you built. That's what remunerated work is.

You still have to build it out of something.

An economy of pure traded labor, like trading foot massages or whatever, wouldn't actually have property.

There are natural resources that nobody created. Using them to create something is not coercion and results in property that can be traded for other property or services. Property can be coercion (e.g. untouched land claimed by or with the support of the state), but it doesn't have to be.

I want to build a table, so I chomp a tree. You want to build a chair, and you chomp another tree. I want to build another table, so I must walk a longer distance to find a tree. If everyone cut trees, it will get harder to find one.

Another person want to build a music instrument. He need some special kind of tree, with some specific size and age, so he want all of us to not cut that tree. Does he make a fence to protect the tree while it's growing? Does he hire a bodyguard for the tree?

Hunter-gathering is coercion-free unless someone other group want hunter-gathering in the same place. An once farmer arrive, it gets more complicated.

> I want to build a table, so I chomp a tree. You want to build a chair, and you chomp another tree. I want to build another table, so I must walk a longer distance to find a tree. If everyone cut trees, it will get harder to find one.

No coercion here. There is no force or threats of violence involved in these scenarios. Imposing a negative externality on someone is not necessarily coercion.

> Another person want to build a music instrument. He need some special kind of tree, with some specific size and age, so he want all of us to not cut that tree. Does he make a fence to protect the tree while it's growing? Does he hire a bodyguard for the tree?

That would likely be coercion. Unless he planted the tree, or acquired it by consensual means from its previous owner, he doesn't have any more right to the tree than anyone else. Although, I don't think it would be as bad as if he had taken the tree from someone who had already cut it down because in that case he would have deprived them of the product of the labour that went into cutting the tree down as well.

The claim that the act of creation gives you exclusive rights can be coercion in a value system that doesn't care about the act of creation (or just cares less about it than things like mutual agreement about what to do with the commons).

I think it's self-evident that a person should not be deprived of what they create without their consent. I'm not sure what you mean by "mutual agreement", but I assume you don't mean that literally, as there would be no conflict and no need for any kind of ethical theory in a situation where everyone agrees.

That's what I'm trying to get at, those things aren't self evident, they are a value system.

Enacting property rights over those natural resources is the initial act of coercion that makes trade possible.

Merely using resources isn't coercion but it doesn't "result in property" unless you also apply coercion to exclude others from them.

(Seems like a pointless word game you're trying to play here.)

I'm not advocating for property rights over natural resources. I'm advocating for property rights over artificial objects created by labour applied to natural resources.

Whatever you want to call it, you need coercion to enforce the exclusivity.

That's a difference between physical objects and trading pure labor itself (like the trading foot massages example).

Property is enforced by the government and its social contract exactly the same way that taxation is.

You didn't actually agree in a mutual contract with everyone when you "traded" your property, except for the agreements the government upholds with its system of laws that forms the social contract and taxation is a clause in that contract.

> With that being said, the US already spends more on public healthcare than Canada does

That's because it's mostly all going to predatory insurance and drug companies rather than to doctors and other medical professionals. Universal healthcare cuts out all the needless middlemen and and incentivizes governments to put reasonable caps on the profits of drug companies.

That's an interesting name.

>The group’s multiple-paged ransom note suggests that victims perform three socially driven activities to be able to download the decryption key.

Wow, just that sentence alone makes a flood of memories come back.

(Purposefully doing my morning... executive time... in a place I never went when I was younger to get a fresh look at things.)

Just so everyone is on the same page, The Goodwill company is not good at all. They used to be, maybe, but they do this thing where they pay people less than minimum wage who often do their job better than folks with a "normal" IQ.

It was also widely known in my hometown if you donate to them, the employees pick off the good stuff so it rarely meets the shelves -- anyone who was a serious computer hobbyist would do deals on Craigslist, since unlike eBay, if someone just starts walking away with your device without paying you can physically stop them or call the cops.

I'm an enviornmentalist, I don't believe in getting the newest anything if the old works, so often I'd sell a previous device after doing my best to wipe the hard drive.

Only once did I have an issue on Craigslist, and it was after I had moved to a new state.

I had someone I sold a cracked iPhone threatening to sue me and a bunch of other nonsense. I told them the ad said as is, and I had assumed they were buying it for the parts, which they paid a more than fair price for, and that it was unsurprising that an iPhone with a cracked screen would fail, and they can meet me at kroger for their money back minus a restocking fee, like you'd expect at Best Buy, if they promise to never contact me again.

I picked Kroger because they had an armed security guard, and apparently literally doing the sale inside the lobby of a college town police station wasn't enough to send a message: I am operating in the open, I am giving you a fair deal, we are not friends, and I get very angry when I have to put a bunch of thought into how to convince someone to never make me feel unsafe again.

(I'd love to find an analyst role, but I don't know how you land those, my email is in my bio if anyone is having staffing issues and wants to make an offer.)

Right now, most people in the US work for free 3-4 months out of the year via taxes. This is theft as well, but interestingly enough it has a smaller overhead then taxes, which nearly all of the funds are transferred to the 1%.

It is wild how many folks on HN think they shouldn’t have to pay taxes

It's not wild to think I shouldn't be forced to work for free 3-4 months out of the year, especially when nearly all of the money is being transferred to the 1%. If it were actually contributing to something I may have a different opinion, but that is not the case.

That’s just another restatement of your belief that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes.

But I’ll add that claiming you have to work for free for part of the year is a silly way of looking at at. You’re never forced to work for free for even a single hour! You just have to pay a fixed percentage of your hourly wage in taxes, an arrangement which has been in place across every developed country for many decades.

"Taxation is theft" is the rallying cry of the overprivileged who want to feel like victims for once.

Completely false, and an attempt at character defamation while sidestepping the facts.

A primary human right is you own the fruits of your labor. Period.

Equating people's income with "the fruits of their labor" is ridiculous.

(Might as well claim that the government's income collected through taxes is the fruits of the government's labor.)

My income is the fruit of my labor... That not really disputable... I'm not working for free.

It's very unrealistic, one might say childishly naive, to assume that this is how income is distributed.

They have a word for that: Slavery.

Of course, you wouldn't have such ideas in your head in the first place, if you were capable of listening to other people.

You’re claiming that it is a human right to not pay any taxes? I have a hard time imagining there’s much basis or precedent under international law to support such a position

Side note: taxes do not fund spending in countries that issue their own currency and that currency is not pegged to something else. In this sense, the US does not need taxes to fund spending on healthcare, in the same way it does not need taxes to spend nearly $1 trillion on the military.

Modern monetary theory describes taxes as primarily tools to reduce some effects of income inequality (and that is not done anymore) and, most importantly, provide the value of money. In essence, taxes (and the threat of imprisonment if you do not pay them) is what makes paper, and now numbers on computers, a thing you will die without.

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