The Obama administration hacked the world. Let's see when and if the Chinese come to this level.
American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
111–120 of 301 posts
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#112> The specific intelligence organization—of which the United States has 18—is unknown. I certainly couldn't have named them all, so I dug up a list: • Air Force Intelligence • Army Intelligence • Central Intelligence Agency • Coast Guard Intelligence • Defense Intelligence Agency • Department of Energy • Department of Homeland Security • Department of State • Department of the Treasury • Drug Enforcement Administrati…
What does Space Force Intelligence do?
Probably study developments in Chinese and Russian anti-satellite capabilities. Or any other nation-state with assets that could interfere with Space Operations.....but primarily the two adversaries mentioned.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#113> The specific intelligence organization—of which the United States has 18—is unknown. I certainly couldn't have named them all, so I dug up a list: • Air Force Intelligence • Army Intelligence • Central Intelligence Agency • Coast Guard Intelligence • Defense Intelligence Agency • Department of Energy • Department of Homeland Security • Department of State • Department of the Treasury • Drug Enforcement Administrati…
Departments of Agriculture and Education don't own intelligence agencies?
Edu might as well start one, there's some rich intel to be gathered from e-proctoring tools
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have the makings of a new Netflix series there. I propose it be called Check In (or Cheque In for those of us in the UK).
There's a lot of potential here. I'm thinking a slow burning Breaking Bad set up that sells itself as a light hearted Fawlty Towers-type show about a wide eyed Monopoly enthusiast fulfilling his dream, but with every season it gets darker and grittier and ends as a tangled web of international crime and corruption. Everything spirals out of control. The hotel is hosting a big conference and the minister of whatever i…
This is almost exactly Ozark, if anyone likes the idea and wants to watch now.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#115This isn’t surprising to me. I know lots of people who work for this company in the Netherlands, and I’ve heard a lot of inside stories about the questionable business practices that go on there. Starting at the very top, with the fraudulent marketing lies to sell you rooms because there’s only X number of rooms left, which is entirely bogus, and for which the courts have punished them, if I recall. They’re not inter…
For some reason, the hotel business seems pretty shady. My sense from crawling the web is that it's one of the areas that have the most blackhat SEO as well. Straight up linkfarms. This is sheer speculation, but I do think the hotel business is really convenient to get into if you have a questionable side-business and need to launder money. Who is to say if a room was occupied or not that night, if that foreigner who…
> For some reason, the hotel business seems pretty shady.
Any business where people in charge have no affinity with the end product automatically becomes shady. The only source of pride for these people is to rake in more money, so it's even difficult to blame them.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
BooKing.com is one of the biggest Perl shops in the world. They're desperate to hire lots of willing Perl programmers, so they have to set the bar low. And inexperienced programmers cause lots of security problems. Edit: My point is about the moral flexibility of BooKing.com, which is well established and widely known, not good Perl programmers, who are rare, hard to hire, and extremely expensive (especially by Nethe…
Are Perl programmers generally more morally flexible than others?
They grep what they can.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#117This isn’t surprising to me. I know lots of people who work for this company in the Netherlands, and I’ve heard a lot of inside stories about the questionable business practices that go on there. Starting at the very top, with the fraudulent marketing lies to sell you rooms because there’s only X number of rooms left, which is entirely bogus, and for which the courts have punished them, if I recall. They’re not inter…
> It is unfortunate, that this is what the tech industry has evolved into. My thoughts, exactly. I started off in the 1980s, just as tech was starting to become mainstream. In the early days, we were not the most "socially well-adjusted" crew, but were fairly enthusiastic about the tech, with most of us working for the love of the craft. Then, the money started to pour in. It was inevitable. That brought the sharks a…
I know someone who works in the music industry and recently got a new boss, coming over from Booking.com - and guess what since that guy started, the new priority on the agenda is to introduce dark patterns in the company's online offerings...seems like Booking.com is a real hotbed for that.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#118This isn’t surprising to me. I know lots of people who work for this company in the Netherlands, and I’ve heard a lot of inside stories about the questionable business practices that go on there. Starting at the very top, with the fraudulent marketing lies to sell you rooms because there’s only X number of rooms left, which is entirely bogus, and for which the courts have punished them, if I recall. They’re not inter…
Booking.com is the poster child of 'dark UX patterns' like that.
I cannot recall anything concrete but from HN and other tech news platforms I heard only bad things about the platform.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They’re not interested in anything but profit above all else Not disagreeing with you, but why is it a surprise to anyone? Any company that seems to be “nice” is only doing that as a good PR increases their profits, which depending on domain may be very important.
Any public company, perhaps. Private companies could decide to care about profit not as much and be genuinely 'nice' -- though the invisible hand would probably come along at some point and replace it with something more profit oriented.
I find it unfortunate that the "invisible hand" is somehow seen as a real force of nature. It's a spooky, ideological term that implies some kind of simple generality describing a system that is everything but simple. Additionally it is used as a bad excuse for exploitative, oppressive or otherwise shitty behavior - which is ironic, because that is exactly the thing that is claimed _not_ to happen by definition.
There are real firms in highly competitive markets that have been doing well for decades or even more than a hundred years without putting the profit motive above everything else, but have favored long term stability, cooperation, servicing customers, respecting workers and so on.
Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent
#120This isn’t surprising to me. I know lots of people who work for this company in the Netherlands, and I’ve heard a lot of inside stories about the questionable business practices that go on there. Starting at the very top, with the fraudulent marketing lies to sell you rooms because there’s only X number of rooms left, which is entirely bogus, and for which the courts have punished them, if I recall. They’re not inter…
The way I use booking.com: Search for a suitable hotel or apartment and find their name. Then search for them independently and make the reservation directly. I mean: they have a great search interface and all, but I refuse to funnel money to gatekeepers whenever I can... Stories like this just affirm my suspicions about companies like them...
To play the devil's advocate here - I do the same as you, but last month when I booked a 3 week vacation Booking offered better prices than the hotels themselves.
They also didn't pull any stunts like other hotel aggregators do (show you a price and change it when you get to the checkout).
I also had a single instance in the past where I wanted to prolong my stay at a hotel, and the hotel clerk told me I'd get a better deal if I booked through Booking, which I did.
Generally I think you're right, but I guess it depends.