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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a difficult problem to solve. It shows the importance of paying close attention. NK has shown to be quite good at bypassing sanctions but it seems that the link is almost always through China. It would seem that the best way to go about this would be through stricter negotiations with them, since they are already acting as a significant intermediary. Either they know about this or the great firewall is not so great (I suspect a bit of both).

Edit: Interesting to see that this particular thread is getting heavy traffic and attacked. I'm not sure I've seen this happen on HN before, at least not a front page post. @Dang, I guess we can add a signup filter to prevent similar usernames being generated within a timeframe, since presumably these come from different IPs. Should be a simple regex filter and provide some warning system? Anyone else know?

https://i.imgur.com/ngexngJ.png

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It’s certainly interesting seeing the thread get attacked so obviously - that’s a first as far as I’ve seen on HN.

In terms of the actual story I think that we should be careful not to introduce insane KYC for contractors just to avoid the NK boogeyman.

If such measures were introduced, that would seriously restrict the ability to work with people from around the world. I also fear that scammy companies such as id.me will lobby for such measures in order to extract profit from companies who want to contract abroad, all the while not actually stopping sophisticated threat actors.

Yeah that is something I'd be worried about as a potential "solution." It should not involve placing spyware on contractor's systems. And it should not involve bureaucracy dependency hell either.

Edit: Interesting to see that this particular thread is getting heavy traffic and attacked.

It isn't, the spam is spread across multiple front page stories. There might be some IP address rotation but I'm not sure why it's allowed to get through when it would be so easy to filter.

Problem: the Norks actually are starving, have a poor but fairly large standing army, and are sitting on China's border, and are not estranged from South Korea, on a personal level. China would prefer not to have a humanitarian catastrophe on it's borders, starving people looking for food, causing mayhem. Gunning the starvies down antagonizes the South, needlessly, and of course, having an unstable state actor as a loose ally is not the worst thing in the world. Iran has Hezbollah. China has the Norks. America... spends a lot of time vetoing UN resolutions against allies in the Levant, do they not?

@dang is a no-op. You should send an e-mail to hn@ycombinator.com. I'm writing one as I write this comment.

@dang is a signifier that makes it easier for dang to visually see his name (or search and differentiate from the more common word) in comments. I was writing an email but I won't send if you got this covered. Thanks

is a signifier that makes it easier for dang to visually see his name

It isn't. That's been explained in many threads of his comments, I feel reasonably sure some as previous replies to you.

> It isn't.

Well __I__ can visually distinguish a username more easily with @ in front of it. Just the same way as I, and many others, use various typographical marks to indicate various things. It does also make a *manual* thread search easier.

I feel reasonably confident that the vast majority of people doing this are not expecting @dang to be pinged, but are just using it either due to habit and/or a visual indicator. Either way, I'm not sure why this is such a big deal and worth more than a single exchange. Potentially someone doesn't know, it is okay to inform them, but after "I know" or "I didn't know" there is no more to be said.

It's not that big of a deal, the main problem with it is people assume this is actually a way to get moderator attention for something. It's great that you don't but plenty of users don't know that nor are they aware of the reliable method of emailing hn@ycombinator.com.

The other, probably more important reason not to do it is that it gums up threads with pointless meta which runs against the site conventions. If a comment starts with @dang, it probably doesn't belong in the thread. Just like that meeting, it could have been an email.

> The other, probably more important reason not to do it is that it gums up threads with pointless meta which runs against the site conventions.

It seems like we are complaining about the same issue. Again, why does this conversation exist since it has clearly been established that I am aware and that anyone reading is aware. If you got a problem with how I use typographical indicators, sorry, I'm going to keep doing it. You can keep starting these metas if you want, but it seems hypocritical to me. I'll just stop responding to prevent more metas, because I've been given no indication that anyone thinks it actually pings @dang other than people who get upset at people using "@". Seems like a classic assumption, where people try to solve a problem that doesn't exist (or exists in a very small percentage).

And as you can read, I did not start with @dang. It was an edit, and into the edit. And as you can read, I was going to send an email but then saw several users note they did, so wish to not spam the email any more.

I think we're done here and have derailed the thread enough. I don't think anyone's opinion is changing, and that's perfectly fine.

that anyone reading is aware

That's the thing, they aren't.

I've been given no indication that anyone thinks it actually pings @dang

You can find lots of comments by people who think that and replies by dang explaining it does nothing. The idea that we just have no clue what the effects of this are and why moderators think it is best avoided is just an odd one. The busybodies repeat this because the moderators do. Well, that and they're busybodies.

I did not start with @dang.

It doesn't matter, editing your comment to add meta is the thing that ends up derailing comments and threads. It's spamming your own comments, effectively - such comments are regularly moderated to the bottoms of threads.

To be fair its not only this thread.

The dodgy AI product spam attacks have been escalating recently, or so I've noticed. I don't think I've seen this with any other product class here.

I think I've only seen it once before and that too was on a politically contentious thread. Definitely is rare and I don't blame anyone for being suspicious given that the spam started quite quickly after this post was created (and how all comments got initially downvoted). Who is definitely within question, but without a doubt the HN sight is under attack and is getting significant traffic that is slowing it down.

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