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287 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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klik99 ◴[] No.42743428[source]
"If you want to try it, be aware that it requires Intel Pentium 166MHz or above."

Made me laugh. Fun article, also really love the genre of "bored smart person goes too deep on something that the end result is obvious by common sense but proving it requires surprising amount of ingenuity and scrappiness"

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fishstock25 ◴[] No.42743514[source]
Totally agree.

And a great example that truth is complicated, expensive and uncomfortable. It's much easier to postulate an evil nation-state entity with a bad plan (without evidence) than to dig through the thicket of this article. It's much cheaper as well, certainly in terms of time and knowhow. And it's also much more comfortable to claim you're the victim and have uncovered a conspiracy, rather than realize this was just the result of the patchwork typical of engineering.

Kudos to the author.

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1. DSMan195276 ◴[] No.42743630[source]
I would also add, it's not _unreasonable_ to be wary of something when a tool like a virus scan pops up a warning. The jargon used to explain what the executable is doing is gibberish to any 'normal' user, there's no way for them to know it's listing stuff you'd more or less expect it to be doing.

Of course, there's a bit of a jump from that to making bold claims about what it's doing, but the initial concern was understandable.