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Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

lol this is Royal Mail, not Google. It's not like it has $80 million sitting around. Maybe they should have been more flexible. That's usually how you negotiate: start with a lot and work to something smaller that the counterparty will agree on. Done-in by greed and got $0, which they deserve. Shows how even the rules of negotiation applies to dark markets.

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Royal Mail is still a very large corporation and could have paid. BUT they simply did not think the amount was worth paying, I suspect both in term of the direct consequence if the data were published (which the hackers apparently did in the end) and in term of PR, reputation, etc because they couldn't have kept the payment secret (too big).

So IMHO the issue was miscalculating leverage.

This could be a loss for the criminals or a way to build reputation so the next victim is more likely to pay up.

There is one more point: by not paying they develop a reputation that they are not worth attacking. The next criminal org might just skip attacking them. If everyone follows this examples the criminals will give up.

It depends because the costs of running the malware operation are way less than 80M. At this point they are just going for the lulz.

the hackers already threatened going nuclear by releasing files and letting Europe fines their 0.5% which is more then 80M.

This is not over and Royal Mail is in a lose/lose situation here

All about BATNA.

Dare I say, relevant username?

I need this joke explained to me.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pauper

Royal Mail was privatised because 1st world state postal systems have to subsidise the postal systems of 3rd world countries.

Its an international agreement which has come back to bite the UK because China is still classed as a 3rd world country.

Lets just say the globalist's who set the rule's are finding their rules are now not so good.

The US has a similar agreement with China.

"The new 1969 agreement included terminal dues, the receiving postal agencies would charge the country of origin for delivering the post on by-weight basis.

To be blunt, shipping from China to USA (and most of the rest of the world) is much cheaper than shipping domestically in USA because the terminal-dues are much too low and account only for the total weight of the post, not for the number of items.

For example, in 2013 China paid $1/kg (or $0.50/lbs)[1] to have post delivered in USA. This is MUCH lower than domestic pricing, especially if it’s light-weight objects.

As an example, I just ordered a new wristband for a watch I own from China. I just weighed it, and it weighs 78 grams. That means China would pay less than 8 cents to have this wristband delivered anywhere in USA.

By comparison, sending the same weight in a domestic letter in USA[2] would cost 92 cents, or a factor of 11.5 more.

Reality is that this agreement now acts as a massive subsidy to especially China who produces a lot of low-cost low-weight products and can now deliver them to customers worldwide for a price much lower than local companies can.

This situation will persist until the relevant agreements are renegotiated. I’m frankly surprised that hasn’t happened already.

[1] https://archive.is/20121212225536/http://www.upu.int/en/acti...

[2] https://www.stamps.com/usps/postage-rate-increase/

https://www.quora.com/How-is-China-able-to-offer-free-worldw...

The US has already moved to self-declared rates under the 2019 UPU Extraordinary Congress agreement [0]. The reason a change was not made earlier is because the US was a net winner under the terminal dues scheme until 2014 [1] [2].

[0] https://www.cep-research.com/news/usa-claims-total-victory-i...

[1] https://www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com/featu...

[2] https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/14533_20.html

> China would pay less than 8 cents to have this wristband delivered anywhere in USA

lol why even bother? After recent inflation, 8 cents is so close to zero we may as well give them free delivery.

Why does international post TO China still cost so much then?

It's because when you ship internationally, you only pay for the domestic leg (e.g. in America) and not the terminal leg (e.g. in China). Your shipping costs to China cost so much because you have to pay the American rate, while people in China shipping to America have to pay the Chinese rate.

Some countries are cheaper for some things than others, that's why so many jobs from the west were offshored to parts of the world with inferior legislation, inferior infrastructure and inferior currency's.

Every country has their own currency, and some currency is more expensive than other currency's, so 1 British pound can buy 1.2 US Dollars, 1.12 Euros, 161 Japanese Yens and so on. The British pound is also the oldest central bank currency in the world.

So when someone buys something made abroad, they are buying into Child Abuse and Slavery.

Unfortunately, our Govt's also force people into this situation by putting things like govt services online when considering how much of todays tech is made in country's with questionable legal frameworks.

And all the while is also draws attention away from the financial system that cant make its mind up, how its going to evolve to fulfil its social contract and obligations with the public because some people cant relinquish power masquerading as knowledge.

Its all chicken and egg situation stuff.

But the postal strikes during the winter months is timely as well. Will the cold winter months break their spirits or just turn this into a virtual signalling exercise to the rest of the world and the UK to start demanding higher wages much like we see with the Reddit AntiWork getting news organisation attention.

Those Spooky Hackers from Russia..... Is this what Trump called Fake News?

I've seen how security services can burn a stock market listed company for an agenda knowing the public have short term memories for some things, and share prices recover.

I think you're referring to the Universal Postal Union's terminal dues, which are transfers between countries to compensate for last mile delivery imbalances. While it's true that China is in Group 2 and the UK is in Group 1 (out of 4 total groups) when calculating terminal dues, the UK is actually a net winner because it pays less to deliver mail than the amount it receives in terminal dues [0]. The UPU definitely causes distortions in the price of international shipping but it's hard to pin the privatization of Royal Mail on this issue.

[0] https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/14533_20.html

I think it was privatized because of right wing and neoliberal ideals. When is that not the reason?

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