Remember "Stratcap" folks. The organization made to funnel insider info into other nations where it would be profited off of, I believe JP Morgan or some other shady company was to be the financial backer.
Then the "terrorists" wikileaks helped expose it all.
Bonus snippet from the leak:
On Jul 23, 2011, at 11:41 PM, Don Kuykendall <kuykendall@stratfor.com>
wrote:
"We blamed everything on the lawyers. The result will be a frustrating StratCap and Service agreement that you and Bruce will vomit over. So be it. George, Shea and I are on the same wave length and are willing to have loose ends in the contract to get the business deal done. The three of us have an understanding that goes beyond whatnots in the future that might happen. If we can't trust each other, then things are going to fail regardless what the contract reads. StratCap and STRATFOR are the same investment to Shea, George and me."
edit: I cannot for the life of me figure out why this would be down-voted. Was it the syntax, grammar? Was it highlighting one of Stratfor's own emails about StratCap and Stratfor being considered one and the same? The cultivation of insider info paid for, then 'laundered' offshore for for-profit use while those involved also get a cut of the profits?
Beuller?
edit edit: I would honestly appreciate input to whoever does the negative votes, sometimes sprees. In some instances in which I vote down myself I cannot fathom down-voting without adequately explaining why the to user.
This post was certainly not worth a downvote, but the details are a little fuzzy. Perhaps it was the because your second sentence seems to assume nefarious intention on Stratfor's part. I'm upvoting, for the sake of discussion.
StratCap was an attempt by Stratfor to start their own hedge fund of sorts, funded by Shea Morenz, previously a regional director for Goldman Sachs.
Morenz, "proposed a new venture, StratCap, which would allow us to utilize the intelligence we were gathering about the world in a new but related venue-an investment fund. Where we had previously advised other hedge funds. We would now have our own, itself fully funded by Shea. Shea invested over $2 million in Stratfor and more in StratCap. In return he took a seat on Stratfor's board and a minority position in Stratfor, whose control remains in Don's and my hands. It was a good deal for Stratfor, a good deal for StratCap, and since the deal closed officially on August 1, we now have
the task of doing what we all want-building Stratfor and StratCap." [1] email from Friedman to Stratfor employees
As I understand it, the deal never took flight, and caught a lot of clouded press after the leak.
I'm not sure what you mean by:
>organization made to funnel insider info into other nations where it would be profited off of
Statfor deals with off-the-shelf OSINT available to you and me. StratCap was Stratfor's attempt to profit FROM a hedge fund "Where [they] had previously advised other hedge funds." [1]
If you have any info on StratCap having 'insider trading' intentions, I'd love to hear about it.
Sorry for not fully elaborating on the subject as it is convoluted and mostly easily searchable with the keywords I've already listed.
To further discussion, what did you find insightful in context to this parent thread's topic? I can only begin to imagine the possibilities to access what is moderated and what is not. What is your opinions?
edit: How is consonants doing? I am a bit down at seeing the same actors in the news again doing their same shifty acts. I have always assumed headlines like NSA/Snowden would have a damper on the will to start-up business or innovate a new industry but never considered the change in tone it would have on HN users in general.
Near the end of my father's life, he needed medical equipment at home. The equipment was provided by a company that has deals worked out with all the local hospitals.
The price for one oxygen condenser is covered after a victim(patient) pays for the device for around half a year.
Looking over some others I know, they are all going through this same company. Referred to them by each of their hospitals.
I cannot fully explain the scheme worked out from the hospitals, but I know it depends on having the often confused patient signing a bundle of documentation while he is being led out the door. I read over the documents and it seemed fair, I just had no time to research all that was needed. My father was in full legal control and he himself just simply followed through with what the hospital asked.
I would report this to any other financial services you may use, including your employer. While it could be a simple hack and drain, there could be more going on.
I hope they do. There is an obscene amount of integral parts in automobiles that are made out of poorly formed plastics. Not only do a higher number of parts fail, the manufactures making replacements often follow the same flawed construction.
No 1940s vehicles didn't come with ABS, front and side panel air bags. But linkage in the suspension was at least metal, and wasn't known to fatigue every five years. If I were so inclined I could bring my hick mechanic in here and he would have volumes of corner cuts to cite that have resulted in unnecessary deaths over the years.
Some advancements have been great but overall legacy parts don't engulf vehicles in flames. Hodge-podge workarounds do[1].
Something I believe that needs to be delineated is if the NSA is doing this work or if one of their contractors is. For an example of a contractor doing such services, Endgame Systems[1].
"Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems. Endgame weaponry comes customized by region—the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China—with manuals, testing software, and “demo instructions.” There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies."
With news of payments rendered to companies complicit in handing over data under dubious laws, I believe much more attention should be put on the 'plumbers' themselves.
[1] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
To summarize my two other comments, talk of anything remotely against the whims of HN mods gets your account, your submissions deaded.
Nevermind how _hackers_ who have taken on the White House, Washington Post and others are defecting against Assad due to his chemical attacks[1]. The topic involves a whiff of politics so it must be moderated against! Any hacker, technical, code related aspects are ignored if one shred of the topic goes against the whims of HN mods.
If you keep going like this I think you'll need a new account soon. HN is pretty fair when it comes to talking about things that go against the whims of the moderators, if it weren't I would have been banned long ago.
Sorry for the late-ish reply, but the point I think I failed to elaborate on fully enough was that the topic of politics is tolerated here as long as it is relate-able to most.
But if it involves a topic like Syrians, even if the topic involves Bluecoat.com's hardware being used to track dissidents, something most users here fear the NSA/GCHQ may be doing, it is down-voted.
The accounts that post it have been hell banned if they dare point out the relevance of the issue if ethnic and national borders are ignored.
"If I keep going on like this," this is something I have to do, before I have examples of white dissidents to show as well.
Infact, in another topic I provided very technical details to an event being linked[1]. That article was deaded, rendering my commentary on the technical aspects useless.
edit: In-case users are down-voting before reading what was linked. The comments I provided showed how monitoring hardware was used to track people of 'interest' like religious followers. I have been attempting to focus on the ramifications for hardware like Bluecoat's ending up being used to monitor and persecute others.
This persecution is not just using to harass others but to know what leaders of Sunnis to 'cleanse' as to make populating Alawites easier[2].
One of my accounts was hell-banned for this very topic.
If HN wants to halt discussion they are finding a very effective way to do so.
edit: Why is this comment getting down-voted? Must I start collating a list of users complaining their submissions are being overrode by others? Or show how they get down-voted/dismissed when bringing it up?
If form is the best critique you can muster, please don't even comment. If you wish to read a longer more heart-felt comment of mine regarding egregious copyright violations, here[1]. It is a topic that pains me to this day, take a moment to read if you will.
To make a different but related reply, see the comment in which I responded to a submission from another? I attempted to direct the discussion to the hacker/technical aspects of the "Syrian Electronic Army." Their prolific hacking of large entities is rather noteworthy. I noted how a 'western' company named Bluecoat had their hardware installed by Assad, the logs were later leaked showing tracking of sexual and religious activity.
I tried by best to steer the conversation into a realm that truly does relate to "Hacker News." The real life ramifications of producing spyware, ISP data mirroring hardware. Of course the topic was deaded and my commments down-voted.
Is HN a place for commentary on Snowden and Manning sexual habits or for the details and real ramifications for our work?
I've been hell-banned and down-voted for trying to steer discussion into more than social observations of the actors involved. It lowers faith in this community and those involved moderating it.
One article I submitted was overridden by an elder member when he submitted it. Long after the thread gained positive discussion. Pointing out this flaw, received me one of my first hell-bans.
What I am to learn from this? Do not submit things older members may later submit? Do not point out the flaws in such a system?
edit: Thanks swombat for ending with a question, a way to further discussion instead of making it a pointed statement. :)
The second one was submitted by a user with more karma, average, and days in HN.
Sometimes a story is submitted by two persons and the dupe detector fails. One of them get traction, the selection is by random events, like the hour of the submission, how many upvotes it get's in the first hours, which other stories are in the first page, ... I have seen some good stories that get only 2 or 3 points, and after a month someone else submits a similar story from another source and it gets 50 points. It's also a matter of luck.
Was the second article posted with the '/2' at the end of the link? Things like that seem to cause most filter hiccups, I tried to discount those obviously.
For science and all that, can you think of other examples?
edit: Oh I see it is different chapters, /1 /2 etc. Nevermind that.
One article I submitted was overridden by an elder member when he submitted it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "elder member" -- do you mean someone with more karma? Someone whose account was created before the account of yours to which you're referring? An individual whose age is greater than yours? An account that makes daily posts and receives regular upvotes?
Also I'm confused about why you're spending so much effort to make yourself noticed -- it's weekend late night/early morning for most of HN's readership, which means your effort has significantly less effect than it would about 50-60 hours from now...
Well some people submit articles with '?' at the end or other such nonsense to post the same article others have. But in many instances submissions from 'green' accounts that have gained traction suddenly poofed in favor of the same article from a more established (account age) user.
I was not exactly concerned by it until it the same occurred to me. When the issue was raised, I received a wave of down-votes. To boot further submissions were hell-banned!
Flabbergasted, my tone and demeanor on this site has changed since. Cheers for the conversation instead of silent down-votes or condescending commentary, stephengillie.
Undermining governance, diplomacy, while promoting corruption.
But by all means take the public facing statements as they are crafted.