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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

wired.com

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Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#21

Post by khc »

iak8god wrote: post #19
khc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrible to scroll on mobile as well. With chrome on android, you first see Snowden's face with a bunch of numbers on the top. If somehow you figure out that you need to scroll (on mobile, the scrollbar is usually not visible until you scroll), you have to go through seemingly pages of nothingness. AND IF SOMEHOW you still don't give up, there, CONTENT! On firefox for android, I actually see "The most wanted man in t…

> Horrible to scroll on mobile as well That's interesting. I came here to say that it looks and works great on mobile, specifically chrome on android. Sounds like it's wildly inconsistent between devices.

I am using a Nexus 7 2012.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#22

Post by aestetix »

tokenadult wrote: post #15

I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative reporter, James Bamford, who has broken…

It's worth noting that in addition to being the author of the Wired story that originally leaked news about the Bluffdale, Utah facility, James Bamford also wrote the Puzzle Palace, which IIRC is the first book ever published about the NSA.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#23

Post by glenneroo »

adityab wrote: post #18

Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown: 1. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great. 2. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% autom…

"MonsterMind"

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#24

Post by khc »

adityab wrote: post #18

Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown: 1. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great. 2. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% autom…

The article says it's called "MonsterMind", not "MasterMind"

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#25

Post by ch4s3 »

"Programs like this had existed for decades, but MonsterMind software would add a unique new capability: Instead of simply detecting and killing the malware at the point of entry, MonsterMind would automatically fire back, with no human involvement. That's a problem, Snowden says, because the initial attacks are often routed through computers in innocent third countries. “These attacks can be spoofed,” he says. “You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?”"

This piece is pretty interesting.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#26

Post by EliRivers »

XorNot wrote: post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

Has it (or the link) been changed?

I see just text, beginning "THE MESSAGE ARRIVES" with a thin bar at the top, containing numbers 1 to 7. Scrolling down instantly scrolls the text; there's the occasional thin bar across screen with an advert, and pictures do fade up and down as I scroll, but there is no point at which the text doesn't scroll as expected.

Using Opera on Ubuntu.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#27

Post by XorNot »

dabernathy89 wrote: post #17
XorNot wrote: post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

I actually don't mind this kind of scrolling - I think it can be useful for storytelling. In this example the scrolling over text doesn't seem to be messed with, which is good. I think what's frustrating about this example in particular is that there is no feedback for scrolling when the page 'pauses' on an image. There should at least be an element moving so that the user knows the page isn't freezing.

I disagree but you really shouldn't be being downvoted for this opinion.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#28

Post by jrmiii »

aestetix wrote: post #22
tokenadult wrote: post #15

I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative reporter, James Bamford, who has broken…

It's worth noting that in addition to being the author of the Wired story that originally leaked news about the Bluffdale, Utah facility, James Bamford also wrote the Puzzle Palace, which IIRC is the first book ever published about the NSA.

He says exactly that: > Finally, after graduation, I decided to write the first book about the NSA.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#29

Post by Maxious »

adityab wrote: post #18

Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown: 1. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great. 2. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% autom…

Press coverage of the Syrian internet outage at the time: http://www.cnet.com/news/blackout-syria-vanishes-from-intern... "The Middle Eastern country has been experiencing an Internet outage for several hours, and many people on Twitter are reporting that phone lines are down as well."

http://www.renesys.com/2012/11/syria-off-the-air/ "There was one brief whole-country outage of less than ten minutes on 25 November. By the time that one was confirmed, the outage was over. It would be reaching to call that a “precursor event” or “practice run,” but that’s a possibility."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/anonymous-declares-... "The Syrian government said that terrorists were behind the outages, but CloudFlare, a firm that helps accelerate Internet traffic, said it would have been extremely difficult for any type of sabotage to cause such a comprehensive blackout, according to Reuters."

http://blog.cloudflare.com/how-syria-turned-off-the-internet "All the edge routers are controlled by Syrian Telecommunications. The systematic way in which routes were withdrawn suggests that this was done through updates in router configurations, not through a physical failure or cable cut."

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#30

Post by a3n »

happyscrappy wrote: post #10
XorNot wrote: post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

And the seriousness is kind of lost with banner ads for Cheetos.

AdBlock Edge.

When I first installed it, my motivation was partly to fuck with The Man.

But good lord what a great web experience I've had since then. It's almost a completely different web, with a completely different purpose, to inform me rather than to sell me.

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