Likely a response to the Syrian airbase tomahawking from a couple of days ago?
Russians are known for what they themselves call "asymetrical answers", so this seems to fit the pattern.
Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
131–140 of 323 posts
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be curious as to which particular "anti-mistakes" you had in mind (that you believe a non-native speaker wouldn't be likely to make). I have some hunches (like the over-use of linking verbs, and certain overly-idiomatic colocations), but I'd be curious as to what stands out in your view.
"The peoples" is unlikely. "-ing" after most verbs is unlikely. "the" is unlikely before "Freedom Caucus" and "NSC". There's no "the" in Russian, and ESL speakers often omit it, or put it where it doesn't really belong. The word "caucus" in itself is unlikely: I've never even heard of it before I moved to the US, it's not in common use abroad. "Whose" is unlikely. "To destroying" is very unlikely. "Will be happening"…
fascinating. To me, this linguistic analysis is much more interesting than the data dumps.
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well documented analysis of a corpus of comments on some Latvian sites, yes. Anything in 100+ pages serving as a proof of Kremlin connections with the "hybrid trolls" (gotta love the newspeak)? Not so much. I don't know whether Russians are xenophobic aggressive bastards or knights in shining armor exposing the wrongdoings of others, it's just that claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exagge…
> claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated. What? gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.
Alacritous state actors more nimble at trolling than 4chan? You decide, I don't care. My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved - if you read into "Trolls from Olgino" reports carefully. US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" [0].
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/fillin...
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#134The content reads pretty clearly like a native English speaker imitating immature hacker-speak. It comes across as if it were written by a script-kiddy; that may be intentional.
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Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#135remember that 1000s of paid russians were used to interrupt our election on sites like reddit. wouldn't be surprised if a few leaked to this site. especially with green accounts.
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be curious as to which particular "anti-mistakes" you had in mind (that you believe a non-native speaker wouldn't be likely to make). I have some hunches (like the over-use of linking verbs, and certain overly-idiomatic colocations), but I'd be curious as to what stands out in your view.
"The peoples" is unlikely. "-ing" after most verbs is unlikely. "the" is unlikely before "Freedom Caucus" and "NSC". There's no "the" in Russian, and ESL speakers often omit it, or put it where it doesn't really belong. The word "caucus" in itself is unlikely: I've never even heard of it before I moved to the US, it's not in common use abroad. "Whose" is unlikely. "To destroying" is very unlikely. "Will be happening"…
Very cool. Thanks for the data points.
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.
Yup, I've been living in England for over 20 years and my English language proficiency is well above that of most of the locals, but I still had to look up SCOTUS and POTUS a few years ago (probably when I started reading HN actually). Now that I know them I still would never consider using them in writing (the former is actually reminiscent of something offensive).
British native here. Do you not watch much TV or many movies?
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#138It's pretty fascinating to read the Shadow Broker's posts. They have to write something, since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable." So they have to come up with all sorts of contrived reasons about why they're doing this, complete with broken english to fool stylometry detection that walks the fine line between being believable and preposterous. Someone sp…
As a Russian myself, I can tell you with certainty that there are mistakes in that text that a Russian ESL speaker would never make, and verb tenses are a bit too good for an unskilled speaker. Due to the combination of these two factors, I bet this was written by a native English speaker who thinks he/she knows the mistakes a Russian would make. They're wrong.
"Actually it's probably a false flag to make Russia look bad." - throwaway71958, created 8 days ago
2017 in a nutshell right there.
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#139remember that 1000s of paid russians were used to interrupt our election on sites like reddit. wouldn't be surprised if a few leaked to this site. especially with green accounts.
HN is by now a well known forum, and exerting influence over its participants would be valuable for many parties; including but not necessarily limited to state actors. Hence, it's fair to assume that there are comments made in bad faith - particularly in highly visible political threads like this one.
Identifying specific malicious actors (and their origin) is tricky from a reader's POV, so the best I can personally do is not let ridiculous statements go unanswered. Ignorance is more common than malice, but I'm sure there's a bit of both in here today.
Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons
#140The content reads pretty clearly like a native English speaker imitating immature hacker-speak. It comes across as if it were written by a script-kiddy; that may be intentional.
NONE of you guys read poetry? This is a bend on "America", by Ginsberg. All coding and no poetry makes Jack a dull boy. Read it.