Are you describing Europe? Our taxes definitely feel like they are going to the "regime", making politicians and the wealthy richer, not the everyday worker.
These aren't North Korean entrepreneurs building businesses in a free market. Any enterprise in North Korea should be understood as slave labor to provide support for a criminal regime.
It can be part of a long-term strategy, like sowing the seeds of progress through the cultural effect that the animation itself, and the trade relations have. Or, it can just further fuel the oppressive system that they have, helping them keeping up longer, delaying its inevitable collapse.
Generally, how far downstream does the US State Department expect companies to vet vendors for sanctions violation? Due diligence this many layers deep is expensive, especially if hostile (investigative work to proactively discover dishonest sourcing reports.) I would think it would vary by industry--e.g. animation is obviously less stringent than medical devices so would have fewer reporting and certification structures already set up. Does anyone have experience dealing with this?
Yes, of course, but I was asking what level of due diligence is expected to verify that the chain does not violate sanctions.
In other words, when a problem like this is discovered, the US State Department will assign more blame to the company if their attempts to avoid violating sanctions fell below a threshold; what is that threshold for the arts industry.
Yeah, but "outsource it to a bunch of companies who then outsource it" is literally how the economy works. The most mundane product you can imagine has a network of upstream suppliers that is essentially incomprehensible in its complexity.
Ok, so you expect the airline to mine the ore to make the tools needed to mine the ore needed to make the aluminum used in the packaging of the snacks they give out on board?
Do you have to check just for the product that you're selling or for the inputs into that product?
Do you have to check that the tablets, keyboards and mice used by your employees and those of outsourcing companies were not made in North Korea? Do you have to check that the ink used on the keyboards weren't made in North Korea? Do you have to check that the coal for the power station for the keyboard factory didn't come from North Korea?
The entire chain all the way down is sanctioned, the US can and will climb up and down that chain to punish sanctions violations. A company like Disney will have to have a Sanctions Compliance Program and like any other compliance regime, there are standards, external auditors, etc. to make sure enough is being done, and "enough" can be a bit of a moving target. If you get caught having sanctioned suppliers, those standards and auditing get kicked up a notch, if you did a really bad job maybe fines or criminal charges.
There isn't ever a sense of "I'm doing enough and therefore the sanctions violations happening are no longer my fault". It's somewhat up to you to determine your risk and tailor your compliance program to address them and to adjust if you're ever wrong.
How guilty you are is a function of how good a job the state department thinks you're doing trying to avoid sanctions violations.
> How guilty you are is a function of how good a job the state department thinks you're doing trying to avoid sanctions violations.
Is the standard for this codified in clear language anywhere, or is it merely based on the whims of some federal prosecutor/judge? If I make digital watches, and I buy coin cell batteries from a supplier who buys battery precursors from a supplier who buys LiCoO2 from a manufacturer who buys lithium-rich brine from a supplier who buys lithium mining equipment from a sanctioned entity, how much of the full brunt of Uncle Sam's retribution can I expect to come crashing down on me?
Feds have 99+% conviction rate and infinite money and time, meanwhile you sit in cage and deal with frozen accounts while trying to pay your attorney. They imprisoned weev for doing arithmetic on wget'ing a public website.
Worst sin is angering the gods. I would imagine most the time theyll probably just ask nicely for you to stop, then bury you if you don't, but for political or convenient targets they seem fine going straight for the throat.
The hyperbole isn’t helping your argument here. Weev spent time brute-forcing collection of personal information which they discussed using for phishing, manipulating AT&T’s stock price, and potentially shorting the stock:
They were too bumbling to actually do anything that serious but being too broke to run a stock scam isn’t exactly a great character testimonial, and all of that is well outside of professional ethical boundaries in the infosec community.
Its not hyperbole, you're just using misguided rhetoric of the prosecution. Weev has escaped to Ukraine in any case, those same bumbling idiots making your argument had their conviction dropped on appeal.
It’s certainly possible that a court might have found his actions did not violate the relevant laws, but that was not the case in the first trial where he had full opportunity to challenge the prosecution’s claims. You might characterize that as “misguided rhetoric” but that should be your cue to ask whether it’s really true that you understand the situation better than his real legal team.
The main reason the Feds’ conviction rate is so high is they’re lazy cowards who only try cases that are extremely easy to convict. It’s not that they do nothing but there are shitty incentives in place to only put cases in front of judges that are certain.
Since they are using your money to do this work, is this not what a taxpayer would want? How long are you gonna keep that gig if you are a coin flippin kind of prosecutor, and when your boss runs for whatever office, he gets crucified for wasting taxpayer money on uncertain cases?
More based on the whims of a prosecutor. Many small companies violate sanctions (usually unknowingly) and don't get prosecuted. But stick out too much, and you'll likely get hammered.
State Department will have all the docs one needs to avoid any problems. In your example, the real risk would be that the lithium mining equipment is dual-use, ie: they also use it to mine yellowcake uranium ore, or when your watch business takes off, they struggle to provide enough brine, and bring in specialists from Afghanistan, who streamline the process and who's Dari has a Tehran accent.
They can let you keep making money until it's promotion time, or an example needs to be made for an election campaign or they find out your watches seem to be the chronometer of choice of the latest insurgency.
Quite contrary I would say. An American megacorp will always know how much profit from the US sanctions it can do and get away with it. Sometimes a slap on the wrist can happen, but in general... You do want those campaign donations flowing, do you? Then there is no reason to rock the boat.
Smaller companies from other countries may not be so lucky so they may actually refrain from such activities.
Honestly if N Korea had a cheap/low-barrier remote visa it might be attractive. I would imagine having an oppressive authoritarian regime looking at you as a prime tax slave might mean none of the prols would risk getting their head chopped off to mess with you. Meanwhile labor/rent/food gotta be hella cheap.
You go there to work remotely. Food/labor/rest are super cheap.
Everyone is starving to death there, to the point where meth is casually used by most people to stave off hunger pangs.
Not to mention, if they decide they may just get some fun leverage out of a foreign hostage, they may just decide to claim you committed a crime and beat you half (or 3/4's) to death.
This is just the news stories I can recall off the top of my head as well...
Not everyone all the time of course. There would just be barren earth instead of a country.
The food supply is prioritized for the military. Food insecurity is frequent for civilians.
A pattern we have seen play out many times: NK makes a threat of some sort. The West and its allies try to talk them down. As part of negotiations they demand food. Sometimes they get it.
If a nation demanding food not to blow up its neighbor is not dealing with food insecurity in its society at large I will eat my hat.
North Korea doesn't have a great history with respect to foreign "guests"[1].
Here's a choice quote:
>The four lived together in a two-bedroom house outside of Pyongyang, where they were forced to study the writings of then-leader Kim Il Sung and were subject to regular beatings. They were also featured prominently in propaganda magazines and movies.
Totally agree, but I'll point out they entered as technically enemy combatants, not with a visa.
And dresnok said the opposite and retired fat and with alcohol cirrhotic liver and a nice stolen wife and downtown apartment, which is far more than he would've got in USA as such a lazy, stupid, criminal that he was. He even become a local celebrity as a movie star playing as a white devil.
It’s not like people are regularly entering as anything other than defectors and the one guys wife said she was tricked into going there and held against her will.
Yes "stolen" wife. Great for dresnok as his worst fear was broken homes (he came from one and experienced divorce) so the held against will was a huge selling point for him. From watching docs in his final days I sincerely believe the stolen wife who couldn't divorce was his biggest selling point in staying.
Most North Koreans face starvation on a regular basis, and being excited about the prospect of having a cowed population that serves you is either sociopathic or psychopathic, or both. Seek some help.
All of that being said that when those in power think you made a single mistake, you're dead.
I kind of see the idea but... I don't think it's worth the risk. Authority figures in dictatorships just aren't always rational. They're by definition not capitalists anyway.
The economics of where you live are very different in a communist (Or whatever NK calls itself now) state. I would assume that the people with these jobs don't have an American-style commute.
Seems like a difficult problem to solve. It shows the importance of paying close attention. NK has shown to be quite good at bypassing sanctions but it seems that the link is almost always through China. It would seem that the best way to go about this would be through stricter negotiations with them, since they are already acting as a significant intermediary. Either they know about this or the great firewall is not so great (I suspect a bit of both).
Edit: Interesting to see that this particular thread is getting heavy traffic and attacked. I'm not sure I've seen this happen on HN before, at least not a front page post. @Dang, I guess we can add a signup filter to prevent similar usernames being generated within a timeframe, since presumably these come from different IPs. Should be a simple regex filter and provide some warning system? Anyone else know?
@dang is a signifier that makes it easier for dang to visually see his name (or search and differentiate from the more common word) in comments. I was writing an email but I won't send if you got this covered. Thanks
Well __I__ can visually distinguish a username more easily with @ in front of it. Just the same way as I, and many others, use various typographical marks to indicate various things. It does also make a *manual* thread search easier.
I feel reasonably confident that the vast majority of people doing this are not expecting @dang to be pinged, but are just using it either due to habit and/or a visual indicator. Either way, I'm not sure why this is such a big deal and worth more than a single exchange. Potentially someone doesn't know, it is okay to inform them, but after "I know" or "I didn't know" there is no more to be said.
It's not that big of a deal, the main problem with it is people assume this is actually a way to get moderator attention for something. It's great that you don't but plenty of users don't know that nor are they aware of the reliable method of emailing hn@ycombinator.com.
The other, probably more important reason not to do it is that it gums up threads with pointless meta which runs against the site conventions. If a comment starts with @dang, it probably doesn't belong in the thread. Just like that meeting, it could have been an email.
> The other, probably more important reason not to do it is that it gums up threads with pointless meta which runs against the site conventions.
It seems like we are complaining about the same issue. Again, why does this conversation exist since it has clearly been established that I am aware and that anyone reading is aware. If you got a problem with how I use typographical indicators, sorry, I'm going to keep doing it. You can keep starting these metas if you want, but it seems hypocritical to me. I'll just stop responding to prevent more metas, because I've been given no indication that anyone thinks it actually pings @dang other than people who get upset at people using "@". Seems like a classic assumption, where people try to solve a problem that doesn't exist (or exists in a very small percentage).
And as you can read, I did not start with @dang. It was an edit, and into the edit. And as you can read, I was going to send an email but then saw several users note they did, so wish to not spam the email any more.
I think we're done here and have derailed the thread enough. I don't think anyone's opinion is changing, and that's perfectly fine.
I've been given no indication that anyone thinks it actually pings @dang
You can find lots of comments by people who think that and replies by dang explaining it does nothing. The idea that we just have no clue what the effects of this are and why moderators think it is best avoided is just an odd one. The busybodies repeat this because the moderators do. Well, that and they're busybodies.
I did not start with @dang.
It doesn't matter, editing your comment to add meta is the thing that ends up derailing comments and threads. It's spamming your own comments, effectively - such comments are regularly moderated to the bottoms of threads.
It’s certainly interesting seeing the thread get attacked so obviously - that’s a first as far as I’ve seen on HN.
In terms of the actual story I think that we should be careful not to introduce insane KYC for contractors just to avoid the NK boogeyman.
If such measures were introduced, that would seriously restrict the ability to work with people from around the world. I also fear that scammy companies such as id.me will lobby for such measures in order to extract profit from companies who want to contract abroad, all the while not actually stopping sophisticated threat actors.
Yeah that is something I'd be worried about as a potential "solution." It should not involve placing spyware on contractor's systems. And it should not involve bureaucracy dependency hell either.
I think I've only seen it once before and that too was on a politically contentious thread. Definitely is rare and I don't blame anyone for being suspicious given that the spam started quite quickly after this post was created (and how all comments got initially downvoted). Who is definitely within question, but without a doubt the HN sight is under attack and is getting significant traffic that is slowing it down.
Edit: Interesting to see that this particular thread is getting heavy traffic and attacked.
It isn't, the spam is spread across multiple front page stories. There might be some IP address rotation but I'm not sure why it's allowed to get through when it would be so easy to filter.
Problem: the Norks actually are starving, have a poor but fairly large standing army, and are sitting on China's border, and are not estranged from South Korea, on a personal level. China would prefer not to have a humanitarian catastrophe on it's borders, starving people looking for food, causing mayhem. Gunning the starvies down antagonizes the South, needlessly, and of course, having an unstable state actor as a loose ally is not the worst thing in the world. Iran has Hezbollah. China has the Norks. America... spends a lot of time vetoing UN resolutions against allies in the Levant, do they not?
It's a little ironic considering part of season 2 has some meta commentary on how hard it is to create animated shows. Guess the easy way is to indirectly outsource it to NK!
That season definitely was a little slow, but it left me wanting more, so I read through the comics. Based on the quality of what the show has done so far and of the source material I'm still excited for the next season whenever it finally comes
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of the show "Invincible" which had abysmal animation, and lo and behold, its right there are the top of the list.
Our of curiosity why did you think Invincible had abysmal animation? Which is ironic since in the last seasons they even broke the fourth wall and did a tongue in cheek poke at their audience who criticize their animation quality explaining how they're under crunch and what techniques they use to cut corners. Quite clever actually.
Didn't think they were covering up their North Korean animators though lol.
They didn't do themselves any favors by putting out a nicely animated teaser for season 2, which was made by a studio that otherwise didn't work on season 2 at all (they were busy animating Captain Laserhawk for Netflix)
I’ve only seen season 1 but it’s barely even animation. It looks like “motion comics”.
I enjoyed it anyway (I liked the comic, and this is playing out like a “second draft” with some stuff tightened up, so that’s really cool to see) but it’s one of the worst-looking animated anythings I’ve seen. It’s on par with the bottom half of amateur Flash animation in the ‘00s.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadTaxes go to the regime, anywhere, that’s the definition of taxes. You get benefits from them like infrastructure.
Payment for animation from North Korea goes 100% to Kim so he can fund things like his harem.
You're the one outsourcing, so it's your responsibility. The entire chain.
In other words, when a problem like this is discovered, the US State Department will assign more blame to the company if their attempts to avoid violating sanctions fell below a threshold; what is that threshold for the arts industry.
The same as you were employing them directly.
Boeing used to make airplanes. Now they outsource the work of "make the airplanes" and all it cost them was their reputation.
Less outsourcing, more just doing the work please.
Think about exactly where this ends.
But sure, even in case of ore you have a responsibility to make sure it isn't being delved by slave labour.
Do you have to check that the tablets, keyboards and mice used by your employees and those of outsourcing companies were not made in North Korea? Do you have to check that the ink used on the keyboards weren't made in North Korea? Do you have to check that the coal for the power station for the keyboard factory didn't come from North Korea?
There isn't ever a sense of "I'm doing enough and therefore the sanctions violations happening are no longer my fault". It's somewhat up to you to determine your risk and tailor your compliance program to address them and to adjust if you're ever wrong.
How guilty you are is a function of how good a job the state department thinks you're doing trying to avoid sanctions violations.
Is the standard for this codified in clear language anywhere, or is it merely based on the whims of some federal prosecutor/judge? If I make digital watches, and I buy coin cell batteries from a supplier who buys battery precursors from a supplier who buys LiCoO2 from a manufacturer who buys lithium-rich brine from a supplier who buys lithium mining equipment from a sanctioned entity, how much of the full brunt of Uncle Sam's retribution can I expect to come crashing down on me?
Worst sin is angering the gods. I would imagine most the time theyll probably just ask nicely for you to stop, then bury you if you don't, but for political or convenient targets they seem fine going straight for the throat.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/01/goatse-security-trol...
They were too bumbling to actually do anything that serious but being too broke to run a stock scam isn’t exactly a great character testimonial, and all of that is well outside of professional ethical boundaries in the infosec community.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/appeals-court-re...
It’s certainly possible that a court might have found his actions did not violate the relevant laws, but that was not the case in the first trial where he had full opportunity to challenge the prosecution’s claims. You might characterize that as “misguided rhetoric” but that should be your cue to ask whether it’s really true that you understand the situation better than his real legal team.
They can let you keep making money until it's promotion time, or an example needs to be made for an election campaign or they find out your watches seem to be the chronometer of choice of the latest insurgency.
Smaller companies from other countries may not be so lucky so they may actually refrain from such activities.
Even for tourists who they are trying to extract lots of hard currency from, the food quality is notoriously poor.
You go there to work remotely. Food/labor/rest are super cheap.
Everyone is starving to death there, to the point where meth is casually used by most people to stave off hunger pangs.
Not to mention, if they decide they may just get some fun leverage out of a foreign hostage, they may just decide to claim you committed a crime and beat you half (or 3/4's) to death.
This is just the news stories I can recall off the top of my head as well...
The food supply is prioritized for the military. Food insecurity is frequent for civilians.
A pattern we have seen play out many times: NK makes a threat of some sort. The West and its allies try to talk them down. As part of negotiations they demand food. Sometimes they get it.
If a nation demanding food not to blow up its neighbor is not dealing with food insecurity in its society at large I will eat my hat.
Here's a choice quote:
>The four lived together in a two-bedroom house outside of Pyongyang, where they were forced to study the writings of then-leader Kim Il Sung and were subject to regular beatings. They were also featured prominently in propaganda magazines and movies.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188656665/travis-king-north-...
And dresnok said the opposite and retired fat and with alcohol cirrhotic liver and a nice stolen wife and downtown apartment, which is far more than he would've got in USA as such a lazy, stupid, criminal that he was. He even become a local celebrity as a movie star playing as a white devil.
All of that being said that when those in power think you made a single mistake, you're dead.
Not saying I'd do it. But it might be attractive to the right person.
Edit: Interesting to see that this particular thread is getting heavy traffic and attacked. I'm not sure I've seen this happen on HN before, at least not a front page post. @Dang, I guess we can add a signup filter to prevent similar usernames being generated within a timeframe, since presumably these come from different IPs. Should be a simple regex filter and provide some warning system? Anyone else know?
https://i.imgur.com/ngexngJ.png
It isn't. That's been explained in many threads of his comments, I feel reasonably sure some as previous replies to you.
Well __I__ can visually distinguish a username more easily with @ in front of it. Just the same way as I, and many others, use various typographical marks to indicate various things. It does also make a *manual* thread search easier.
I feel reasonably confident that the vast majority of people doing this are not expecting @dang to be pinged, but are just using it either due to habit and/or a visual indicator. Either way, I'm not sure why this is such a big deal and worth more than a single exchange. Potentially someone doesn't know, it is okay to inform them, but after "I know" or "I didn't know" there is no more to be said.
The other, probably more important reason not to do it is that it gums up threads with pointless meta which runs against the site conventions. If a comment starts with @dang, it probably doesn't belong in the thread. Just like that meeting, it could have been an email.
It seems like we are complaining about the same issue. Again, why does this conversation exist since it has clearly been established that I am aware and that anyone reading is aware. If you got a problem with how I use typographical indicators, sorry, I'm going to keep doing it. You can keep starting these metas if you want, but it seems hypocritical to me. I'll just stop responding to prevent more metas, because I've been given no indication that anyone thinks it actually pings @dang other than people who get upset at people using "@". Seems like a classic assumption, where people try to solve a problem that doesn't exist (or exists in a very small percentage).
And as you can read, I did not start with @dang. It was an edit, and into the edit. And as you can read, I was going to send an email but then saw several users note they did, so wish to not spam the email any more.
I think we're done here and have derailed the thread enough. I don't think anyone's opinion is changing, and that's perfectly fine.
That's the thing, they aren't.
I've been given no indication that anyone thinks it actually pings @dang
You can find lots of comments by people who think that and replies by dang explaining it does nothing. The idea that we just have no clue what the effects of this are and why moderators think it is best avoided is just an odd one. The busybodies repeat this because the moderators do. Well, that and they're busybodies.
I did not start with @dang.
It doesn't matter, editing your comment to add meta is the thing that ends up derailing comments and threads. It's spamming your own comments, effectively - such comments are regularly moderated to the bottoms of threads.
In terms of the actual story I think that we should be careful not to introduce insane KYC for contractors just to avoid the NK boogeyman.
If such measures were introduced, that would seriously restrict the ability to work with people from around the world. I also fear that scammy companies such as id.me will lobby for such measures in order to extract profit from companies who want to contract abroad, all the while not actually stopping sophisticated threat actors.
It isn't, the spam is spread across multiple front page stories. There might be some IP address rotation but I'm not sure why it's allowed to get through when it would be so easy to filter.
> video interviews
From what I hear, the live deepfakes are getting good enough to make these near worthless.
Didn't think they were covering up their North Korean animators though lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDOpHuUppU
I enjoyed it anyway (I liked the comic, and this is playing out like a “second draft” with some stuff tightened up, so that’s really cool to see) but it’s one of the worst-looking animated anythings I’ve seen. It’s on par with the bottom half of amateur Flash animation in the ‘00s.
Like in one episode an alien spaceship blows up and a static gif of an alien goes spinning around.
Just compare that to the animation in Xmen '97 which has a similar episode count.