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He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

mastermind.atavist.com

11–20 of 118 posts

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#11
hacker news is not cool with link shorteners. most link shorteners (bit.ly, et al) are banned here. chances are good that the only reason this particular shortener isn't banned yet is because dang is not aware of it. should be replaced with this article's true url:

https://mastermind.atavist.com/he-got-greedy

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#12
post #10
post #9

Among the most closely-guarded troves of knowledge in the world are those pertaining to organized crime. This stuff is so dramatic and interesting because it is sort of "forbidden knowledge". I have high hopes for Quora (one of the YC portfolio companies) because they are trying to make accessible this sort of locked-up knowledge.

Well, to continue reading, you'll have to log in, however.

I can understand how some are uncomfortable with that, but it's not a big deterrent for me (and I suspect most users). There's really some good stuff there.

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#13
"... Then the arms ship MV Captain Ufuk was intercepted off the coast, Sol told me, the DEA “knew that Le Roux was behind that shipment right away. Because La Plata Trading and Red White and Blue Arms”—companies tied to the shipment—“connected back to ABSystems, and the websites were registered to him. ...”*

quite poor opsec skills obviously not as tech savy as they painted him

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#14

hacker news is not cool with link shorteners. most link shorteners (bit.ly, et al) are banned here. chances are good that the only reason this particular shortener isn't banned yet is because dang is not aware of it. should be replaced with this article's true url: https://mastermind.atavist.com/he-got-greedy

Is it really a link-shortener or just atavist providing a short perma-link? 'atav.st' == atavist.com?

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#16

hacker news is not cool with link shorteners. most link shorteners (bit.ly, et al) are banned here. chances are good that the only reason this particular shortener isn't banned yet is because dang is not aware of it. should be replaced with this article's true url: https://mastermind.atavist.com/he-got-greedy

Is it really a link-shortener or just atavist providing a short perma-link? 'atav.st' == atavist.com?

it doesn't make any difference, if you think about why hacker news bans link shorteners: there should be one, and ONLY one, canonical URL for every article. if you allow two or more, then there is essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions. so i can pretty much guarantee that it is just a matter of time until atav.st is banned here.

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a link-shortener or just atavist providing a short perma-link? 'atav.st' == atavist.com?

it doesn't make any difference, if you think about why hacker news bans link shorteners: there should be one, and ONLY one, canonical URL for every article. if you allow two or more, then there is essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions. so i can pretty much guarantee that it is just a matter of time until atav.st is banned here.

> essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions

No, the shortened URL can be followed.

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't make any difference, if you think about why hacker news bans link shorteners: there should be one, and ONLY one, canonical URL for every article. if you allow two or more, then there is essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions. so i can pretty much guarantee that it is just a matter of time until atav.st is banned here.

> essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions No, the shortened URL can be followed.

True, if anything that should be a feature of HN. To try and follow a 403 and use that instead. The only examples I can think of in which this wouldn't be desired are articles you have to login to access, but that could be a short blacklist or whitelist. Of course once we're inspecting URLs for 403s, I can see a slippery slope to indexing and comparing content of submissions...

Re: He Got Greedy: How the U.S. Government Hunted Encryption Programmer Paul Le Roux

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't make any difference, if you think about why hacker news bans link shorteners: there should be one, and ONLY one, canonical URL for every article. if you allow two or more, then there is essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions. so i can pretty much guarantee that it is just a matter of time until atav.st is banned here.

> essentially no way to detect duplicate submissions No, the shortened URL can be followed.

... and once it is followed, it is the true URL that should be displayed, because it contains more useful information for the end user, like the true domain where the article resides, instead of the alphabet soup you get with link shorteners. which, again, is why link shorteners are banned here.

i probably shouldn't engage in arguing pointless minutiae like this. i will refrain after this one.

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