France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax • Hacker News Board

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#201

Post by scarejunba » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #159

aguyfromnb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story is so odd to me. On the one hand, if true, all Bloomberg had to do was produce evidence; a single compromised server. They didn't. On the other hand, if the journalists fabricated the entire story, saying that all these big companies were hacked, why didn't anybody sue them? It was a major accusation! It just kinda...disappeared.

> On the one hand, if true, all Bloomberg had to do was produce evidence; a single compromised server. They didn't. If the story were true, under what circumstances could Bloomberg reports have come into possession of a compromised sever to satisfy this requirement? > On the other hand, if the journalists fabricated the entire story Journalists evaluate and report what they're told by sources. For instance: they don'…

Buy it from a data center sale? We nuked our drives and sold the rest to a liquidation company when we moved to GCP. It's trivial to pick these up.

It's Bloomberg, my dudes. That news source is the lowest quality trusted news source. I like that they can stay in business though. Made a neat 30+% on SMCI easy peasy. And that requires people like you to trust Bloomberg so that's good.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#202

Post by 1996 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #195

Isn’t Vinci SA the operator of all those French toll highways that were supposed to be free once construction was paid off, but continued to be tolled anyway?

Like in most govt project, I'm sure they found a good excuse for why they were off budget, and thus needed more money.

I presume too big to fail works everywhere!

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#203

Post by analyst74 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

privateprofile wrote: post #182

wheybags wrote: post #58

My trust of bloomberg has been pretty low since the spy chip story, that seems to have been just a hoax. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Any guesses to why aren't Super Micro or other affected parties taking legal action, if it was a hoax like what's reported in this case?

Large commercial lawsuits are like investment, you invest precious resources into a lawsuit that may or may not pay off.

It's entirely reasonable for a company to decide that it's not worth the investment and not pursue.

And to refer back to this article, it's the French AMF fined Bloomberg, Vinci only had to file a complaint, not a full lawsuit with teams of lawyers.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#204

Post by delouvois » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #195

Isn’t Vinci SA the operator of all those French toll highways that were supposed to be free once construction was paid off, but continued to be tolled anyway?

Yes, it is. They got a good deal at our expenses following these outrageous privatisation.

Meanwhile, some Spanish highways eventually got paid off and are becoming toll-free.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#205

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #117

duxup wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not sure what to think of that. I don't think there's much of any "evidence" to prove it and a hack like that is pretty. Then again nobody ... did anything after that either and everyone responded kinda awkwardly about it. I can't help but wonder if they got it dead wrong, but anyone clarifying or suing to prove otherwise would expose something else and so ... nobody talks?

Wouldn’t Apple or Amazon suing Bloomberg force them to provide details and access to their farms in ways that could expose more info than they are willing to give ? I think about the kind of info we only get when lawsuits happen, and here the suing party could be losing more in collateral damage for just punishing a petty journal ?

[deleted]

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#206

Post by colejohnson66 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

privateprofile wrote: post #182

wheybags wrote: post #58

My trust of bloomberg has been pretty low since the spy chip story, that seems to have been just a hoax. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Any guesses to why aren't Super Micro or other affected parties taking legal action, if it was a hoax like what's reported in this case?

Because the bar is really high if they’re a news outlet. You have to prove that they knew what they were saying was false, and did it with the intent to harm.

Besides, I’m sure SuperMicro just wants it to blow over and be done with it. Being in the news for a lawsuit will bring it up again and possibly harm them financially as people (managers who order) who don’t understand things have knee jerk reactions.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#207

Post by gamblor956 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #44

fbn79 wrote: post #11

Do you remember the Bloomberg article about Big China Chip Hack? About Apple was been refuted, debunked, and ridiculed. See https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/04/editorial-a-year-...

And Leif Olson https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/04/bloomberg...

Bad example. All of the allegations in the Bloomberg article were true. Leif Olson actually did all of the things alleged, however the Bloomberg article missed that he supposedly did these things as satire...because Olson didn't actually bother to clarify that his posts were satirical until several days after they were made (and importantly, several days after the article itself was originally written).

Both Olson and Bloomberg had bad judgment here. A political appointee should not have made sarcastically anti-anti-Semitic statements, because he should have had the brainpower to know that in the Trump administration such statements would be taken at face value. And Bloomberg probably should have revised the article to add a paragraph about how a Trump appointee's anti-Semitic statements were actually anti-anti-Semitic in light of additional context that wasn't in the posts at the time they were made.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#208

Post by gamblor956 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #176

lbenes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this accusation thrown out there on social media a few times now. When I've asked for examples, no one been able to provide a list showing that this is actually a systemic problem. With resources like the Internet Archive it should be trivial to prove that this really a problem. Can you back up your claims? Journalists are people and make mistakes. But overall, respected institutions like NYT, WSJ, WaPo, an…

I am as journalist-sympathetic as anyone on here, but even I would agree with the previous commenter's sentiment. Minimization of errors is an old and persistent problem in journalism, and the reasons for this can be relatively innocuous – e.g. general incompetence and complacency; not only in making the error, but also not having a system in place to collect and evaluate feedback/complaints from readers, nor to adeq…

The NYT article was correct.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act applies to discrimination on the basis of nationality, color, or race.

By using Title VI, the Trump administration defined Jews as a race, color, or nationality. However, as Jews come in many races and colors already, the logical conclusion was that the Trump administration was defining Judaism as a nationality.

Additional support for this comes from the fact the order adopts the IHRA definition of what it means to be anti-Semitic, which includes among other things, criticism of the state of Israel.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#209

Post by davvolun » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

blackflame wrote: post #158

davvolun wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It immediately irks me that I'm defending agile here, but part of the point of agile is that the developer doesn't really know what the end user needs, so it's, in theory, better to get a minimum viable product out that meets the user's need, then refine on subsequent releases, rather than spend years working on releasing something perfect that it turns out doesn't fill the user's need. From a similar perspective for…

No, Journalism and Software are not the same. Would you make the same argument that software on the 737 Max should be shipped and then fixed later? Absolutely not. Journalists need to understand that what they write has real-world impact and can actually lead to lot of unnecessary anguish if they publish things that are not true. Truth should always be paramount to speed in journalism. You can't always correct your m…

> Would you make the same argument that software on the 737 Max should be shipped and then fixed later?

No, I wouldn't, but that goes to why not ALL software should be agile, not that it's best to have some journalism be "agile."

I was going to mention space flight regarding software mistakes (https://itsfoss.com/a-floating-point-error-that-caused-a-dam...), but figured it was more of a digression than it was on-topic.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#210

Post by calcifer » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #98

The headline probably needs qualification that the fine was in Europe, not the U.S. I was shocked that any U.S. regulator would attempt to push against the First Amendment in this way. It's a different story with more context.

> The headline probably needs qualification that the fine was in Europe

I think the first word of the title, France, is a giveaway here.