They actually also interview for Chinese companies too. I have a friend who got a big shock when he saw someone wearing military uniform on Zoom. Apparently they didn't bother to hide the identities. My friend told me that the interviewee has very, very good skills (e.g. deep knowledge of X11) but he quickly declined him.
He dug a bit deeper and found out that the North Koreans have special programs for gifted kids. They send them to the schools for dedicated CS education. They also (presumably without proof) have access to the source code of various commercial closed source software.
It's a good pay job (comparing to other NKs) and they get to do what they love, so they are pretty loyal. But I always wonder, wouldn't they burn out eventually? Maybe they can switch fields or become teachers, though.
unhappy_meaning 23 hours ago [-]
> wouldn't they burn out eventually?
They also might not have a choice depending on how much their skills are worth to the gov't... if North Korean.
ferguess_k 23 hours ago [-]
Yeah I heard the security is tight. They are basically just sitting in the hotel full-time. They can't get out because it's foreign land.
I hate to admit, but sometimes I wish someone forced me to sit in a hotel to learn fundamental CS stuffs that I want to do but passion comes and goes so I never got the grit to actually learn much.
barnas2 22 hours ago [-]
Brings a whole new meaning to the idea of a "coding boot camp".
ferguess_k 22 hours ago [-]
haha a true camp...
ornornor 4 hours ago [-]
> I hate to admit, but sometimes I wish someone forced me to sit in a hotel to learn fundamental CS stuffs that I want to do
I don’t think that’s appropriate. You’re jesting about it, NKs working abroad are basically prisoners and their families taken hostages (as in don’t come back or do something we don’t like and we’ll kill your wife and children)
Hardly comparable.
_factor 21 hours ago [-]
Knowing NK, they’re probably part of a genetic breeding program targeting complacency and intelligence. Why fix the system when you can fix the individual?
pelagicAustral 20 hours ago [-]
what a sick thought! imagine that, people that are born to code, hack, reverse engineer, etc... and loyal to the core. I want a book on this...
dleary 18 hours ago [-]
“A Deepness in the Sky”, by Vernor Vinge.
Excellent book, with a concept very close to this as an element.
You don’t need to read “A Fire Upon the Deep” first… the stories are more or less unrelated except for setting. (There is one character who is sort of in both, but going into detail about what that means would spoil it too much).
Both are excellent and worth the time. Skip the other Vinge books until you are sure you want to read everything he wrote, they are “merely” 8/10 instead of 10/10.
Vinge was a CS professor who really made sure everything “fit” together in his works. Although “A Fire Upon the Deep”, started in the late 80s and published in 1992, posits that civilizations much more advanced and capable than ours would be communicating primarily through something like Usenet, which feels a little quaint.
NB that Vinge was the one who popularized the concept of “the technological Singularity”. His books have interesting authors notes where he talks about coming up with ways to write about a far future when he believes that the Singularity is right on track for 2050-2100.
throwup238 18 hours ago [-]
FWIW I found A Deepness in the Sky to be much better than his other books (I read Deepness first). Vinge’s talent for prose got better over time and it’s one of the more imaginative scifi books I’ve read. It can be consumed completely independently and after that one character’s big reveal in Deepness, they just weren’t as interesting in A Fire Upon the Deep. I really wish we had gotten a sequel to Deepeness.
Luckily I quickly discovered that the Children of Time series filled my need for more spider scifi.
Aeolun 12 hours ago [-]
I don’t think Children of Time really matches Deepness in terms of quality, though I guess it’s a distinction between 9/10 and 10/10 :)
bitwize 7 hours ago [-]
A Deepness in the Sky conceptualized "weaponized autism" before that phrase became a thing and I love it.
notyourwork 19 hours ago [-]
Didn’t the nazis try something similar?
piuantiderp 18 hours ago [-]
Plato detected
unsupp0rted 7 hours ago [-]
Real autists don’t need to be forced. They’ll put themselves into that cram room. It gives them superpowers. Really.
I don’t get why more companies don’t leverage this better.
protonbob 22 hours ago [-]
Burn out doesn't seem so bad when you compare it to your family and friends who barely have enough to eat.
ferguess_k 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah definitely. I wish we were able to read more insider stories.
matteoraso 14 hours ago [-]
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but I highly recommend "The Real North Korea" by Andrei Lankov. It really helped to demystify the country for me.
I have read The Aquariums of Pyongyang and Escape from Camp 14, both of which are very good. I think that Aquariums is a better overall book, as the author adds context and background throughout the narrative. Camp 14 is more straightforward and limited to his experience, which for a North Korean is quite limited. They are pretty dated at this point (2000 and 2012, respectively) so there are probably more timely options available now.
18 hours ago [-]
deeThrow94 20 hours ago [-]
I wish we were able to read any trustworthy insider stories. Trying to tease apart propaganda from earnest storytelling is quite difficult ini english.
wetpaws 18 hours ago [-]
[dead]
deeThrow94 20 hours ago [-]
I imagine "a job is a job, everyone's gotta work to eat and sleep" is a pretty universal experience, unless there are post-scarcity societies that have popped up somewhere I haven't heard of. The difference among our scoieties is the degree to which everyone else accepts that it's "just a job". And of course your ability to sleep at night.
Clubber 48 minutes ago [-]
>It's a good pay job (comparing to other NKs) and they get to do what they love, so they are pretty loyal.
I would imagine the state takes the vast majority of their pay.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
Burn out, or are shot out of a cannon.
190eH169ps 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
542354234235 18 hours ago [-]
This comment is simultaneously fascinating and incomprehensible.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
They literally all die the moment China stops subsidizing their disaster of a nation.
progbits 1 days ago [-]
> "One of the things that we've noted is that you'll have a person in Poland applying with a very complicated name," he recounted, "and then when you get them on Zoom calls it's a military age male Asian who can't pronounce it."
Why not simply pretend they are from South Korea?
Tinfoil: Maybe these ones are supposed to fail so everyone feels like they are so clever in stopping them.
Sometimes I wonder why Polish didn’t replace the z digrams with accented letters (č, ž etc.) like many other Slavic languages.
abraxas 20 hours ago [-]
Ah but we have those too :)
The 'rz' phoneme has the same sound as the letter 'ż' which is a different sound from the letter 'ź' (the latter being a softer sound - one that foreigners usually find easier to reproduce).
Whether you write a word with the 'rz' or the 'ż' is governed by a set of orthographic rules that are of course peppered with numerous exceptions.
sph 2 hours ago [-]
You’ll soon find that languages evolved over centuries do not care about consistency and simplicity in grammar rules.
voytec 22 hours ago [-]
Why would we? It "just works". We've only changed how we write the letter "ż" some 30-20 years ago. It was previously "ƶ". Also, "ż" and "ź" are not accents but separate alphabet letters.
zbyforgotp 18 hours ago [-]
There was no typeface change for “ż” - the other typeface is sometimes used now as it was 30 years ago. See the foto at Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BB
voytec 17 hours ago [-]
Early primary schooling in the early 90s and some preschool teaching in the late 80s taught me to write "ż" as a "ƶ"[0].
> It represents the same sound in the Polish alphabet, remaining in active usage by some as an alternative for the letter Ż (called "Z with overdot").
> In Polish, the character Ƶ is used as an allographic variant of the letter ⟨Ż⟩ (called "Z with overdot") although once used in Old Polish.
Funnily, there's a counter-argument to "Straż Miejska" from article you linked, with "Straƶ Miejska" in another Wikipedia entry[1] :)
Additionally, Polish also has more different consonants that e.g. Czech, where the haček accents were first introduced.
sz contrast with ś/si, as does
cz and ć/ci, or ż/rz and ź/zi, or dż and dź/dzi
(might have swapped one or two)
Add in some good etymological reasons why the consonant+i combinations are not respelled and the whole thing makes a lot of sense.
int_19h 5 hours ago [-]
You could also look at Croatian, which has a similar contrast with e.g. "C", so they use "č" and "ć". This could be easily extended to "s" and "z". Or you could take "ż" and apply the same diacritic to "c" and "s".
"rz" is a bit of a special case since it's pretty much etymological - what used to be "r", and corresponds to "r" in the same roots in other Slavic languages, but became to be pronounced like "ź" in Polish. What to do about it depends on whether you want your orthography to be purely phonemic (a better choice IMO, just look at South Slavic languages - it works great for them!) or retain the etymological distinction. But even then it would be better off as a diacritic.
What would be really neat tho is having a single Latin-based notation that works consistently across all Slavic languages, similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Turkic_alphabet. For example, we could use cedilla to represent post-alveolars: ç and ş - and then use acute accent to indicate palatalization ("softness"). So e.g in Czech you'd only need s/ş, in Polish you'd use s/ş/ş́, and in Russian you'd have all four possible combinations s/ś/ş/ş́.
keiferski 20 hours ago [-]
At this point it’s a unique aspect of the language, so much so that changing sz to š for example would feel like a betrayal. There are also a few letters without similar sounds in other Slavic languages (ą and ę) so you’d end up retaining those anyway.
int_19h 17 hours ago [-]
Those make sense since they aren't digraphs. But c'mon, comparing Czech to Polish, it's pretty clear which orthography was designed first, and which learned from the mistakes of the other :)
lifestyleguru 57 minutes ago [-]
Ok, is it a declaration of war?!
regnull 18 hours ago [-]
Why not have both?
graemep 1 days ago [-]
When you are dealing with intelligence services and others who work through deceit that sort of thinking is not tinfoil.
alganet 1 days ago [-]
I have come to a conclusion about this "tinfoil" thing.
Reality: bunch of ponzi schemers, arrogant sub revolutionaries, greedy people, envious people. All together in a pseudo network of trust, always at each other's throats. Unrepentable and thus, impossible to forgive. Sad but not much.
vintermann 21 hours ago [-]
Isn't that what intelligence services and spies are like too? Adam Curtis wrote a great article on it once:
so even though reality isn't exactly as the expected, they are still detecting them because they are more sensitive to situation than normies. situational awareness is not a bad thing even if the reason your heightened awareness is up for a different reason.
alganet 20 hours ago [-]
What are you even talking about?
Sounds like complete bullshit. Your response is exactly the sort of thing I see as a social scam. Situation awareness? That makes no fucking sense.
dylan604 18 hours ago [-]
you've never heard the term situational awareness? that's funny.
if someone thinks there's a conspiracy behind everything so they trust nothing and then it turns out that the thing could not be trusted but because of a different reason than the suspected conspiracy doesn't make the conspiracy theorist wrong about the lack of trust. just the reason for the lack of trust.
compare that to someone that trusts everything. they get screwed because they were not paying attention to trust should be suspect. yet the kooky conspiracy person was better off even if for the not so right reason
alganet 18 hours ago [-]
Sounds like bullshit.
You are talking about personas, like they're action figures or something.
"the conspiracy theorist"
"the spy"
"the trusty shieldbarer"
Then you did a mini plot to tell a small storyline that attaches itself to the conversation. I can do that too if I want.
If you do it to help people, then it's good. If you are doing it to confuse someone or get advantage, then it's a dick move.
Raising those issues about "suspecting everything" is something that I've been exposed to my whole life. Specially in the last years, it has been more intense.
Instead, I believe the stronger position is to believe in human kindness. A healthy mixture of skepticism and trust that cannot be put in a box. Being good without being a fool. Which entails the act of sometimes entertaining the dumb conspiracy agitator or other disruptive personalities.
The more you do it, the harder it is for toxic people. They quickly get into a very previsible box and even pretend they like it.
542354234235 18 hours ago [-]
A conspiracist shouldn’t be confused with a skeptic that attempts to practice and employ critical thinking and structured analysis to issues. Conspiracists get taken in by scams all the time because they put their trust in perceived “outsiders”. Alex Jones sold snake oil for decades to conspiracy rubes. Conspiracism is just a different dogmatic worldview.
alganet 17 hours ago [-]
Can you elaborate on the difference?
croisillon 18 hours ago [-]
You seriously never noticed John Krasinski is Asian? Hats off to you for not seeing race!
throwaway743 18 hours ago [-]
Might work, but they'd have to learn to mask their NK accent.
gossterrible 1 days ago [-]
I recently got one such contact through telegram with a so called Chinese worker asking to use my upwork account to get jobs and he will pay me a share of what he makes through my account. I had a quick chat with him to know how he got my contact info and it looks like they just scrape every profile on github and upwork and my username on github was thesame as the one on telegram. After sending him a meme of Kim Jun Un and asking him if he works for him he quickly deleted our wholesale conversation.
riehwvfbk 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
1 days ago [-]
lifthrasiir 23 hours ago [-]
There is a very close analogue in Korean, called "say f*cking Kim Jung-un now 김정은 개새끼 해 봐", typically used as an irrelevant Shibboleth-like question to move the goalpost during a discussion. As like most such questions, this method won't last too long even if it supposedly works right now; they will be absolutely allowed to say so if the interviewer demands that.
citizenpaul 15 hours ago [-]
>it supposedly works right now; they will be absolutely allowed to say so if the interviewer demands that.
Thats the good thing about being a theocratic dictator. Your rules don't have to be consistent, rational or even make sense. Oh if you slander the supreme leader while holding a goose feather that you burn at his monthly worship you are forgiven. Or whatever.
neilv 1 hours ago [-]
> they will be absolutely allowed to say so if the interviewer demands that.
If so, there might still be limits.
You could make the challenge an n-part, back-and-forth exchange, of increasingly worse insults of that personage.
Complete with escalating to enthusiastic shouting, slapping the table for emphasis, making crude illustrative gestures, etc.
Perhaps there's only so much that an authoritarian work center will tolerate.
For legitimate candidates, doing this at the start of an interview might be sending a confusing message about the corporate office environment. On the other hand, it would serve as an icebreaker, to help candidates feel comfortable sharing. And it will tell you more about the candidate's creativity than Leetcode regurgitation does. Well, until students start buying "Cracking the Techbro Interview: Trash-Talking Edition" books, spending months memorizing lists of insults to recite in interviews, and rehearsing their delivery, with enthusiastic full-arm gesticulating. Actually, that would still be better for the field than Leetcode interviews.
lo_zamoyski 20 hours ago [-]
Not exactly.
You have two factors working against this. The first is that in a communist/totalitarian regime, you don't want to give informants any opportunities for leverage. The fear of it being (mis)used against you is enough to take it off the table as an option.
The second is that were the regime give permission to speak this way, it risks normalizing irreverence toward Kim Jong Un, beginning with a large swathe of employees working in espionage.
rgblambda 17 hours ago [-]
They could make a very specific exception with serious penalties for misuse.
Similar to how part of the Knights Templar's training was to learn to spit on a cross without spitting on Christ "in their minds" in case they were ever captured and made to do so by their captors.
Dracophoenix 17 hours ago [-]
> Similar to how part of the Knights Templar's training was to learn to spit on a cross without spitting on Christ "in their minds" in case they were ever captured and made to do so by their captors.
Eerily reminiscent of 1984's doublethink.
rgblambda 15 hours ago [-]
I don't think the comparison is apt.
Doublethink is to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The spitting on the cross thing is to say/do something without actually believing it.
pbhjpbhj 1 hours ago [-]
It's perhaps more rightthink (only allowing thoughts that would be approved by the party). But as with the parent, I too find the <"i never did $action" thought whilst having performed $action> reminiscent of doublethink... it's at least consistent. I think BB would approve!
Very much the current USA zeitgeist.
lo_zamoyski 14 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that this account of the Knights Templar is dubious and obtained through torture. It also seems odd: coercion already removes culpability in due proportion, and you're still spitting on Christ.
In any case, we're talking about a dictatorial communist regime, where informants and informing on people is widespread, and where having a case file of excuses to eliminate people is standard. We shouldn't trivialize this by appealing to standards that don't apply here.
WalterBright 1 days ago [-]
During the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, the Germans infiltrated Allied lines with fake officers who would give orders that messed up the Allied command structure. The fake officers were Germans who spoke perfect English and had often grown up in the US.
The GIs discovered they could just ask the officers about baseball. A wrong answer, and the officer got shot.
I heard this from my dad (WW2 vet). I don't recall seeing it in any documentary. He told me I would have been shot :-/ as I had zero interest in baseball.
mitthrowaway2 23 hours ago [-]
If they spoke perfect English and grew up in the US, why would they be less knowledgeable about baseball than any other American who happened to have little interest in baseball?
This sounds like it can't have been true, or at least, can't have been common practice, because the false positive rate would be way too high for shooting a person.
qzw 21 hours ago [-]
Baseball was called the national pastime for a reason. Back in the day it was the sport in America. It had a degree of cultural ubiquity that’s hard to understand for us today. Also I assume the questions weren’t about the basic rules of the game but more along the lines of what was going on in the season at the time. The American soldiers would have had up to date news while the Germans would presumably not.
Uehreka 52 minutes ago [-]
Nah, this is definitely one of those just-so stories that’s too cute to be true. Like it sounds like the person who came up with it started with the idea of using American cultural stuff to tell soldiers apart (which maybe happened in some form at some point) and then worked backwards to try and justify why it would be a common practice with a harsh penalty (German officers who spoke perfect english because they… actually were American… but didn’t follow baseball?)
Edit: It reminds me of my favorite definitely fake boomer story: That people used to call out speedtraps on the highway by pulling over and standing in a salute… because cops can compel you not to alert people of a speedtrap… but they can’t compel you to not salute… because that would violate the first amendment? Before the internet dudes used to just sit around telling each other stories like this.
dylan604 23 hours ago [-]
To be knowledgeable about baseball is hard to fake. Like the GP said, I'd have been shot. I might know some names of players, and I might even get some of their positions correct. If you ask me about ERAs, RBIs, batting averages, I wouldn't have a clue. I might know a large number of teams, but I doubt I know all of them. I absolutely couldn't tell you which ones were in the NL and which were AL, nor what the differences are--something about designated hitters or not.
Also, they could just have them count three strikes using their fingers
So it's perfectly reasonable that a person of German ancestry would just not care about American sports.
mitthrowaway2 22 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying it wouldn't detect spies, but a test is no good if it also results in summary executions of one in every five apple-pie Americans.
WalterBright 21 hours ago [-]
When you're fighting for your life, yes it would be acceptable, and yes it happened.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
There's no evidence people were summarily executed for bad answers. People were detained through this method though
WalterBright 12 hours ago [-]
Operation Greif
sorcerer-mar 11 hours ago [-]
What was described above is someone asking another person a factoid about baseball and then shooting them if given an incorrect answer.
You're referring to instances of captured spies (potentially captured by said baseball questions) being tried as spies and executed.
The former did not happen, the latter did happen (which I don't think anyone here would've disputed).
solatic 21 hours ago [-]
Historically, these kinds of questions were kept relatively simple, like how many bases are there, how many strikes, how many balls, how many innings, what's the name of the referee (answer: umpire), etc. They're also a product of a different time when baseball was much more popular in the US among US youth, with a much stronger youth monoculture, where the only way you didn't play baseball as a kid would be if you were a loner or in a wheelchair, neither of which were consistent with becoming an officer 80-90 years ago.
ad_hockey 18 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't that also apply to the spies, if they grew up in the US?
JoelMcCracken 17 hours ago [-]
It would seem like a German who spoke perfect American English bc they had grown up here would be able to answer these basic facts
astura 11 hours ago [-]
>how many bases are there, how many strikes, how many balls, how many innings, what's the name of the referee (answer: umpire), et
What percentage of Germans who grew up in the US and speak perfect American English can't answer those basic questions correctly?
Balgair 16 hours ago [-]
Okay, every other commenter here is talking about how baseball is the national pastime. And, I think you understand that.
I'll rephrase the question a bit here: How could any idiot white male raised in the US in the last 120 years possibly not know about baseball?
What I think was happening was that the US GIs would ask the infiltrating German about current baseball. Not Ty Cobb stuff, but Ted Williams stuff.
Also, for the non-baseball fans here, you have to remember that there were only 16 (28) teams back then [0], essentially no trading of players, and no interleague play. So for your team, you really had to know the core 8 players and a few pitchers. Adding in the other 7 teams gets you to ~80 or so (maximum) and they would reappear on the exact same teams year after year. And there really wasn't any other sports worth mentioning in 1943 [1]. Cognitively, it's a lot less than today.
Also, the Germans wouldn't have access to the information about the 'current-ish' state of the game. It was mostly in newspapers back then, and with the war, getting information from the sports pages out of St. Louis wasn't happening.
Same as it ever was, sports is the lingua franca of the US.
[0] 8 in MLB-NL and 8 in MLB-AL, 6 in NL-NL and 6 in NL-AL (yes, the Negro leagues are the major league, but black GIs weren't on the front lines where Germans would be infiltrating (yes, it's more complicated than this simple comment))
[1] The NFL was pretty nascent still.
qzw 14 hours ago [-]
To add to everything you said, another way to think about the importance of baseball at that time is to imagine that all the time kids now spend on Minecraft, TikTok, Pokemon, Twitch, and YouTube was instead directed at just one thing, and that one thing was baseball.
patall 23 hours ago [-]
I would guess it would have to be a question of false confidence, akin to: 'What do you think of the cardinals win last night' when in fact there was not even a game. Obviously not sure if thats enough to shoot someone, but you may detect someone that is bullshitting quite well.
heelix 13 hours ago [-]
The first time I met my Bride's siblings, I was doing everything in my power to fit in. I noticed her brother was wearing a Miami Dolphins hat. Made the comment - is that your favorite baseball team? Her brothers were horrified. Her sisters were thrilled that I did not know either baseball or football.
WalterBright 12 hours ago [-]
I'd get shot for getting that one wrong, too.
I was once invited to a Super Bowl party, and I thought sure, I'll come. So I went, and watched the game for a bit on the big TV. I was asked, which team are you rooting for? I answered "the ones in the red shirts".
That didn't go over well.
anton-c 23 hours ago [-]
While it might not be widespread there were stories of it happening, and one alleged story of an American being held(but not harmed) because of his lack of knowledge.
A better one I heard is asking about the second verse of the national anthem. The enemies studied it to know it, but ask your average GI(or most americans) what the 2nd or 3rd verse is, lol.... that's a good trick.
WalterBright 12 hours ago [-]
> why would they be less knowledgeable about baseball than any other American who happened to have little interest in baseball?
Because their knowledge of teams and scores and wins and players would be 4 years out of date.
pembrook 2 hours ago [-]
Amazing how nobody can imagine a world before the internet and satellite television.
Following American baseball news from Germany in detail would be virtually impossible in the 1940s.
casenmgreen 21 hours ago [-]
> During the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, the Germans infiltrated Allied lines with fake officers who would give orders that messed up the Allied command structure. The fake officers were Germans who spoke perfect English and had often grown up in the US.
This did not happen.
However, at the time, in the massive confusion of a wholly unexpected large-scale German attack, rumours and paranoia were rife, including that of German parachute landings behind the lines.
A result of this was the widespread belief, at the time, that Germans had infiltrated and were giving fake orders, etc, and so troops were indeed widely being suspected, and asked for example the capital of Illinois and so on (and being asked by privates, who did not know that the actual capital is Springfield rather than Chicago, to generals, who did know).
regnull 18 hours ago [-]
Operation Greif (English: Griffin) (German: Unternehmen Greif) was a special operation commanded by Waffen-SS commando Otto Skorzeny during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The operation was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, and its purpose was to capture one or more of the bridges over the Meuse river before they could be destroyed. German soldiers, wearing captured British and U.S. Army uniforms and using captured Allied vehicles, were to cause confusion in the rear of the Allied lines. A lack of vehicles, uniforms and equipment limited the operation and it never achieved its original aim of securing the Meuse bridges. Skorzeny's post-war trial set a precedent clarifying article 4 of the Geneva Convention: as the German soldiers removed the Allied uniforms before engaging in combat, they were not to be considered francs-tireurs.
the joke I heard growing up is they'd ask suspected spies to sing the Star Spangled Banner, and shoot them if they knew the lyrics beyond the first verse!
mannyv 20 hours ago [-]
What are the last two words of the star spangled banner? "Play ball!"
m463 13 hours ago [-]
reminds me of a spoof game show I saw once.
It was something like Are you as smart as a 5th grader?
A question would be something like "Who was the 5th president?" and the answer was "Benjamin Franklin" or similar. :)
alabastervlog 23 hours ago [-]
Maybe a spy could finally explain to me what it means for light to be donzerly.
autarch 23 hours ago [-]
I think you may have misheard the lyrics. It's "donzer lee lights". Obviously, "donzerly" is not a word, but all lee lights are donzer.
alabastervlog 22 hours ago [-]
Oh, it makes so much more sense now.
Implicitly, I suppose that makes the lights on the windward side blitzen.
qzw 14 hours ago [-]
Ok, I found the German imposter right here.
alabastervlog 1 hours ago [-]
Oh no! Damn you, Gene Autry!
paradox460 17 hours ago [-]
The general don zerlyite was an important figure in the defense of Ft McHenrry
ninju 11 hours ago [-]
dawn's early light :-)
aidenn0 18 hours ago [-]
I don't remember the name of the film, but there was one where (Soviet I think?) spies were caught because they threw away their copies of National Geographic.
WalterBright 12 hours ago [-]
I have my grandmother's NGs from the 1920's.
eesmith 1 days ago [-]
In Issac Asimov's 1980 short story "No Refuge Could Save", the suspected German spy is identified by a word association test based on the third verse of the national anthem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Refuge_Could_Save
When the pre-cursor to MI5 would interrogate suspected German spies during the war, they would ask them to talk about squirrels, and they'd mangle the word so badly, no matter who well trained, that it was an easy tell.
Related: after the war, they were concerned that there were Nazi spies still in England they hadn't uncovered. When the files in Berlin were seized, they went through every single asset sent to England. Not only had they successfully identified every agent, and turned quite a few into double-agents, they also noted that very few agents going the other way had ever been detected.
> There was even a case in which an agent started running deception operations independently from Portugal using little more than guidebooks, maps, and a very vivid imagination to convince his Abwehr handlers that he was spying in the UK. This agent, Juan Pujol García (Garbo), created a network of phantom sub-agents and eventually convinced the British authorities that he could be useful. He and his fictitious network were absorbed into the main double-cross system and he became so respected by Abwehr that they stopped landing agents in Britain after 1942. The Germans became dependent on the spurious information that was fed to them by Garbo's network and the other double-cross agents.
philwelch 20 hours ago [-]
Juan Pujol Garcia was awarded both the Iron Cross from Germany and the MBE from the UK, which makes him a very literal "double cross" agent having received cross-shaped medals from both sides.
ceejayoz 17 hours ago [-]
I'm very curious to know if he ever wore them both. Would be a fun double-take to someone in the know.
red_admiral 5 hours ago [-]
I think some countries in the EU use local variants of that on interviews/exams to gain citizenship for resident foreigners. The UK, as far as I know, has a written exam but you'd better know what kinds of birds are kept at the Tower of London and stuff like that.
i_don_t_know 22 hours ago [-]
In the movie “Stalag 17”, the Germans place a spy among the US prisoners. The spy is a German who grew up in the US and speaks English without accent.
> Germans who spoke perfect English and had often grown up in the US.
Curious if you have any links that go into this further. Were they Americans of German descent who rejoined family in Germany, or? I'm sure it's not monolithic but curious if there was a pattern.
rtkwe 22 hours ago [-]
The exact numbers are unknown but there are a known handful in units like the Wafen-SS. A LOT of documents were destroyed in the fall of the regime. The encounter shown in Band of Brothers supposedly did happen where a PI spoke with a German POW who grew up in America there's no documentation of it but that's not terribly surprising.
We can laugh about this stuff here, but it seems to happen on the regular in the Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic liturgy is so stringently regulated that it is in fact very difficult for any priest or layman to stay current after a decade or more has passed. Perhaps this is one of the genius moves of the vernacular liturgy: that the Latin liturgy hardly changed its words for 500 years, but English and other languages are being constantly retranslated and reinterpreted with new Missal editions.
Case in point: the neutering of the Church for 40 years. The Church was made an "it" in English, and only after a top-down correction was issued did she become feminine again. This did a lot of trauma to many Catholics on visceral levels.
More up to date changes include the addition of "Holy" to "...for our good and the good of all His [Holy] Church]." this one is guaranteed to catch out anyone who's not been to Mass in 10+ years, such as at a wedding, funeral, or Christmastime.
A very recent priest's change is "...who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, [One] God, forever and ever. Amen." the "One" is now omitted, as of last year or so, and in fact every church was compelled to scratch it out in their existing Missals until new editions could be printed.
It is these sort of very subtle yet urgent changes that can really trip someone up if they're not 100% current with liturgical directives. So if you ever suspect you got a fake priest marrying you, see if he says "One God" or not!
So we’ll require RTO for just about everything except paying for flights for in-person interviews, where being in an office might actually significantly matter.
Will never understand the mindset of corporate executives.
hn_throwaway_99 19 hours ago [-]
But you don't even need in-person interviews. Video interviews work fine of you have any semblance of actual competence as an interviewer, and an awareness to check for these kinds of things.
Video filters are still pretty obvious in real-time, and, like the one example given in the article, if the person says they are from Poland but can't speak Polish, that's a good sign, too.
lazide 2 hours ago [-]
The only reason they paid for them in the first place is because they couldn’t get candidates otherwise. Not a problem anymore.
and now they’re trying to reduce staff, hence RTO.
nothing confusing about the situation.
creer 14 hours ago [-]
> 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly,
A more likely reason is that you just called them out. See how most scams work. There is no reason to stick around instead of pursuing easier targets.
On top of that, if necessary and meanwhile, others of the same team might do better at the same time for the same employer and succeed by contrast.
ugh123 20 hours ago [-]
As an American, if someone asked me in the middle of an interview to declare "the north korean leader is fat", i'd consider walking out too.
dgfitz 20 hours ago [-]
Why? It is just a fact. The guy is absolutely overweight. Who cares? Lots of people are overweight. This is also a fact. Are we not supposed to acknowledge that?
wesselbindt 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not the parent commenter, but I feel the same way. Just because something is a fact (although arguably fat doesn't sound very factual) doesn't mean it needs to be discussed during an interview. If someone started Quizzing me on the chemistry of rubber tires for a software dev role, I'd walk too. If someone started listing off the various kinds of sausage there are, I'd walk too. It would make me feel like I'm not taken seriously at best, or that I'm being scammed at worst.
Beyond that, if I looked east Asian, I could also see myself walking on this question for another reason. It would feel like a comment on my ethnic background, which has no place in an interview.
throw3727374 10 hours ago [-]
In American culture it's considered rude and gossipy.
Unless I knew what the reason was for asking, it would be like if an interviewer suddenly talked about how much weight Adele was gaining.
eunos 19 hours ago [-]
> "My favorite interview question, because we've interviewed quite a few of these folks, is something to the effect of 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?
I wont be surprised if the list of "must-denounce" will be growing and in the future there'd be a litany of "mock the enemy" for every interview.
koliber 1 days ago [-]
I love this article. It seems like it is lifted directly from a series of LinkedIn posts I shared about my experience with North Korean job scammers. I also wrote a quick guide on how to protect yourself. Link to LinkedIn post in the blog post below.
So basically Yo-Momma-So-Fat jokes transposed to Kim Jong-Un? Those would also capture a pretty deeply American cultural kind of humor (yo-momma jokes)
mannyv 20 hours ago [-]
He's so fat that when he jumps he jumps the Earth tilts a bit more.
steelbird 21 hours ago [-]
Kim jong un is so fat he jumped and got stuck.
lsy 19 hours ago [-]
What's astonishing to me is the number of companies that will supposedly hire someone and give them credentials without even seeing them on camera. The proliferation of this narrative seems somewhat real and somewhat calculated to further undermine the legitimacy of remote work. But you would think something like "in-person orientation" and requiring that people use their cameras in meetings would solve a lot of the issues here.
SparkyMcUnicorn 19 hours ago [-]
"deepfaking" video[0] and voice is relatively easy these days, and is definitely being employed by some of these candidates. Lower the "webcam" quality a little bit, and it can be difficult for many interviewers to notice something is off.
So require a 4k wide angle camera. These are high skill high pay jobs it's hardly an unreasonable burden.
nyokodo 23 hours ago [-]
Or, we can just start doing interviews in person again.
jobs_throwaway 21 hours ago [-]
Massive alpha in this for devs who can shake someone's hand and make appropriate eye contact
hnthrow90348765 18 hours ago [-]
Big bonuses if you can do small talk (I can't) and like a sports team (I don't)
grogenaut 23 hours ago [-]
We're considering this. Tho we want to do an interview with AI to see how they use modern tools, then the rest onsite to avoid many forms of "cheaters".
Havoc 22 hours ago [-]
Or for some industries back channel checks in network
Only really works in industries that are “small world”
HeyLaughingBoy 15 hours ago [-]
This happened to me where an interviewee used me as a reference (not a good idea!) and the interviewer knew me and called to verify.
nyokodo 19 hours ago [-]
> Or for some industries back channel checks in network
Even in small-world industries, assuming they occasionally accept outsiders, they will still encounter some form of this problem.
Havoc 18 hours ago [-]
>assuming they occasionally accept outsiders
I guess it comes down to industry. We're on hn so emphasis is on technical ability and in that context what you say is true. I'm in a space that requires trustworthiness is part of the core value proposition so there is little acceptance of outsiders and much emphasis on back channel checks that the candidate is solid. NK fake candidate etc is just not a thing in that context
hn_throwaway_99 19 hours ago [-]
Honestly, if hiring standards have fallen so low that NK operatives are able to get through, then more power to them.
I'd be shocked if a simple 15-20 minute conversation with the interviewee's perspective manager wouldn't eliminate all chance of this happening. Video filters are still obvious in real time, any decent interviewer can tell if a person is being fed answers, just ask them more detailed information about their background and projects and not just leetcode-type questions.
All of this just goes to show how abysmal (in some cases anyway) the hiring process is for offshore workers in the first place.
nottorp 23 hours ago [-]
Is this article really about north korean fake* workers?
It looks to me that it describes what a sham the interview process is instead.
* are they really fake? I'm led to believe they actually do the work...
aaronax 23 hours ago [-]
Their position within the grasp of the first-world "stay in line or go to jail" mechanism is fake. They cannot be trusted, because they are essentially above (beyond) the law.
lifestyleguru 51 minutes ago [-]
My CV has so much experience in so many countries that I'd been nonchalantly asked multiple times "is this or that a lie?". At some point I realised that I don't even have to work anymore and now I don't bother applying. You deserve all this, folks.
WalterBright 1 days ago [-]
I presume the candidate needs to provide his address. Have someone else google street map it, and then at some point ask "what is the color of your front door?" If he takes more than 5 seconds to answer it, end the interview.
toxik 1 days ago [-]
If you can check it easily, so can they. Also I have no idea what my front door color is.
WalterBright 1 days ago [-]
> If you can check it easily, so can they
Within 5 seconds? I doubt they could load google maps that fast.
> Also I have no idea what my front door color is
No hire!
Straw 20 hours ago [-]
Why does knowing your front door color have anything to do with hiring? You might just be someone who's very focused on things, so much so that you ignore the environment around you to focus!
WalterBright 12 hours ago [-]
Read the article. It's about detecting laptop farms.
alabastervlog 23 hours ago [-]
Same, I couldn't tell you without checking.
We mostly enter through a side door, and the back door.
... and I also couldn't tell you what color either of those are.
netsharc 1 days ago [-]
"It's been repainted since the Google Street View car last photographed it."
An answer that's also suspicious, because it means they know what you're implying by asking, and they've prepared for it.
WalterBright 12 hours ago [-]
You could ask any question that the resident of a house would know the answer to. Like do you have any trees in your front yard. Is there a McDonald's at the street corner. Do you have a tile or asphalt roof. Do you have a 1 or a 2 car garage. And so on.
chatmasta 21 hours ago [-]
That was my answer when I read the question in the comment you’re replying to… because it’s actually true, and I have looked up my house on street view (as many probably have).
In fact I’d bet a good chunk of people, especially tech literate people, could tell you the most recent date of Google Street View for their house.
aidenn0 17 hours ago [-]
My front door is not the same color as the streetview picture, which is almost a decade out-of-date.
[edit]
Actually over a decade out of date (timestamp says March 2012, but somehow also copyright 2025).
stevage 1 days ago [-]
>This is most likely a laptop farm, where someone in the US agrees to run the laptop from a legitimate address for a fee, typically around $200 a computer, according to Meyers. Last year the FBI busted one such operation in Nashville, Tennessee, and charged the operator with conspiracy to cause damage to protected computers, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, intentional damage to protected computers, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to cause the unlawful employment of aliens.
I don't quite understand the "laptop farm" concept. Can anyone explain it?
chasil 1 days ago [-]
Employers in the U.S. are expecting to see domestic IP addresses.
A laptop farm hosts the corporate laptop (domestically) that is sent to the remote worker. Hardware is provided to work the power remotely, along with all other functions.
Once again showing that "IP Address" filtering is pretty useless if you're trying to keep out someone who's targeting you. It probably does work somewhat to stop bots and crawlers.
stevage 1 days ago [-]
Oh I get it now, thanks.
stevenwoo 1 days ago [-]
You have a bunch of laptops running software that accesses services that are normally restricted (like access per IP or IPs from certain countries would set off alarm bells) the client paying for the laptop can run something that does the work or submits the work from the IP address space that is OK. I contracted for one company and saw an office that had one department with a closet full of laptops scanning Craigslist ads because they were getting blocked if they didn’t take this measure but don’t know the details but they figured out a workaround and automated it to scrape data daily from all Craigslists regions daily.
chatmasta 21 hours ago [-]
At many jobs it will need to be more sophisticated than simple IP spoofing, because the laptops have EDR software installed to monitor employee usage. It would be suspicious if the employee laptop is doing nothing but proxy internet traffic.
I suspect these farms have full-fledged remote KVM setups.
sgerenser 2 hours ago [-]
Most likely. A remote KVM isn’t that expensive anymore, e.g. https://jetkvm.com/
rdtsc 1 days ago [-]
>'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly,
I'd think it just takes a blessing from the dear leader to mock his rotundness in front of the evil capitalists, as long as it brings in the dough and the corporate secrets.
I would think the people doing this are not the lowest level foot soldiers but are somewhat closer to elites and as such can afford to be a tiny bit cynical if the dear leader signals his approval.
koliber 1 days ago [-]
On one such call with a scammer I called him out and said he’s from North Korea. He got a bit mixed up and started rebuffing me. The call got cut off mid-sentence, as if someone else pulled the plug.
There are other tell tale signs that you can watch out for (at least for now)
kmoser 1 days ago [-]
In this case the person doing the mocking is the interviewer. I don't see why the interviewee doesn't just say, "I have no idea" and let the interview continue. Why would that be forbidden?
Totally. "Let's simplify, and assume a spherical Kim Jong Un in vacuum..."
chneu 1 days ago [-]
The only correct answer is that he is a rippling mass of pure beefcake muscle.
rdtsc 19 hours ago [-]
Like Cartman from South Park, if the interviewee responds, "he's not fat, he's big-boned!" that would be at least 20+ points for culture fit right there.
progbits 1 days ago [-]
That would be a failing answer.
jxjnskkzxxhx 1 days ago [-]
> I'd think it just takes a blessing from the dear leader to mock his rotundness in front of the evil capitalists, as long as it brings in the dough and the corporate secrets.
The Muslim fundamentalists to did 9/11 shaved their beards to look less suspicious.
djmips 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this whole thread is rather silly because if this is a game of chess their next move is very obvious.
joshdavham 1 days ago [-]
I wonder what other creative ways there are to expose North Korean employees. That fat question is hilarious but I bet there’s even more hilarious possible questions.
koliber 1 days ago [-]
Look at their LinkedIn profile. All the scammers had non-existent profiles in their resumes.
Call their phone number. All the scammers had non-working phone numbers in their resumes.
Easy to make a legit-looking LinkedIn profile. Start as a recruiter with unbelievable code-in-your-pajamas job openings, connect to 500 developers, then suddenly change to a developer. And phone farms aren't much of a stretch from laptop farms.
koliber 4 hours ago [-]
Yet they don’t do it.
lazide 2 hours ago [-]
they don’t need too yet. plenty of suckers still.
cosmicgadget 1 days ago [-]
"Please read me the imdb plot synopsis of the film The Interview."
yieldcrv 1 hours ago [-]
> ask 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, because it's not worth it to say something negative about that
No body positivity in North Korea?
not2b 18 hours ago [-]
I'm now seeing this all over the place, and if it worked up to now then that's over. NK will just give people a recommended way of answering the question, and if they follow the script they won't get in trouble. Like perhaps, Kim who? Oh, the North Korean leader? Sorry, I have no idea. Further questions about NK can just be deflected with "I don't follow that stuff, sorry".
_QrE 18 hours ago [-]
I think it's silly as well, but I also imagine that deflecting this way would also be extremely suspicious. The agent would probably just think that the jig is up and move on to the next target.
Herring 22 hours ago [-]
This is not a difficult problem. My last position had me take a drug test. I had to go to an actual building, show my ID, and the place/results were logged. They also did a background check, which presumably would have flagged any issues. I think I emailed a copy of my ID. One interviewer even flew me out for a day. They're making an issue out of nothing, and it's not clear why.
> and maybe also avoid hiring fully remote employees.
There it is.
chatmasta 21 hours ago [-]
Background checks won’t detect fraudulent documents used to initiate the check. In my experience you need to provide typical identity information (passport, insurance number, address, etc.). If the applicant has stolen a legitimate identity, they will simply continue to provide documents consistent with that identity.
In-person interviews are the most robust solution to the problem.
21 hours ago [-]
vt_mruhlin 17 hours ago [-]
You can weed these people out with basically any question. "What's the difference between an inner join and an outer join". These guys always sound like they're reading out of a textbook.
eestrada 20 hours ago [-]
In light of this, employee referrals and in person interviews should become increasingly important.
Sadly, most corporate executives will learn the wrong lessons from this and instead use this as an opportunity to push RTO even more.
I played a game of Taboo (a party game) yesterday night. I asked the question "the surname of the leader of party ..." (the third largest one in my country). The guy I asked it to looked at me and answered "I have no idea." He's old enough to vote even if he didn't have to do it yet. Leaders of foreign countries? Maybe he doesn't know where to place North Korea on a map, even the general area.
OK, we could say that the lack of a general culture could be a hint not to hire that person so that could be a legitimate termination of the interview anyway.
koliber 1 days ago [-]
That would be a good answer. But they are very poor at this game and can’t answer basic challenges gracefully.
They do seem to be decent programmers though based on my experience with these scam interviews.
barry-cotter 1 days ago [-]
Culture fit questions everywhere. Wouldn’t want to hire someone of the wrong social class. They might “shoot hoops” or something similarly vulgar.
blitzar 1 days ago [-]
> ”How fat is Dear Leader?”
6'4 - 210lbs
If they can say the line with a straight face they are either an incredible poker player or the wrong kind of American.
fortran77 17 hours ago [-]
According to Perplexity, he is 308 pounds! Wow!
MaxPock 21 hours ago [-]
I wonder what the American version of this question would be
shemtay 18 hours ago [-]
i would think some of our taboo words that a re borderline illegal and I am scared to even type the first letter of with asterixes because i am on a work computer
deadbabe 23 hours ago [-]
Someone should make a Netflix series about a North Korean fake worker because their lives and work sounds very interesting (different).
I’ll always ask this question when these articles appear. How are North Koreans so successful in landing interviews and even jobs?
There are thousands of laid off tech workers desperately trying to get even an interview, let alone a job. Yet, North Koreans having a success rate better than zero seems like a major problem.
The article even says they are interviewing candidates with long complicated names with defunct LinkedIn profiles. Yet, seemingly a normal candidate cannot get past the resume filter.
Tons of articles posted here over the recent years of how broken hiring is and the horror stories. This is taking broken to a whole new level.
Aspos 23 hours ago [-]
I suspect one of my hires may have been North Korean. He passed all the interviews and asked for less compensation than the others, so we hired him. He avoided calls but otherwise did excellent work for about a week — until our KYC and payroll provider flagged him as a fraud.
ChrisMarshallNY 22 hours ago [-]
> asked for less compensation than the others, so we hired him
In todays's lesson, we develop an understanding of the old term "You get what you pay for."
Aspos 18 hours ago [-]
Not sure what you suggest with this factoid. We hire the cheapest out of multiple equally qualified candidates.
ChrisMarshallNY 17 hours ago [-]
Our HR always wanted us to do that, but I used to push back.
The company I worked for (as a hiring manager), paid fairly low wages, and expected employees to stay around for a long time, so I often judged candidates by more than “on paper” qualifications.
tekla 21 hours ago [-]
They actually study and are incredibly good programmers
astura 11 hours ago [-]
They have a whole team of people behind them.
counterpartyrsk 23 hours ago [-]
CAPTCHAs in real life.
dmurray 1 days ago [-]
I'm reminded of SMBC Comics' recent proposal for detecting the use of AI:
Eventually they will get permission to say it during these operations
nbittich 1 days ago [-]
isn't it fat shaming? or because it's some bad guy, is it allowed? what if I'm fat, and don't want to answer
1970-01-01 23 hours ago [-]
Woosh. It's always been allowed to call a fat person fat. File a complaint under the 1st amendment if you don't like someone asking the question. File a complaint under the 5th if are being forced to answer the question. File a complaint with Supreme Leader if this question is bothering you and these rights do not apply to you.
Mistletoe 1 days ago [-]
I'll keep that in mind. I'd probably be crucified by HR for saying fat at work though.
rdtsc 1 days ago [-]
> I'd probably be crucified by HR for saying fat at work though.
The dear leader approves of your workplace!
koliber 1 days ago [-]
Ask the suspicious candidates what they think of the murderous North Korean regime. Avoids body shaming.
dotcoma 1 days ago [-]
Differently slim ;)
al_borland 1 days ago [-]
I assume any similar question that could lead someone to be critical of North Korea would do.
joshdavham 1 days ago [-]
> I'd probably be crucified by HR for saying fat at work though.
Really? What kind of company would make a big deal out of that?
marcuskane2 21 hours ago [-]
Almost any of them?
Asking a candidate about how fat someone is definitely does sound like something that would get an interviewer in trouble.
Many people are deeply insecure about their weight, many women feel very uncomfortable when men make any comment about anyone's weight, body or appearance. The candidate might post on Glassdoor or LinkedIn about the hostile (and possibly sexist or "bro-y" or noninclusive or discriminatory) environment.
Even aside from the HR type concerns, it could legitimately negatively impact the candidate's performance. Imagine an overweight applicant being asked that question, feeling flustered and embarrassed while answering "... about as fat as me?" and then trying to reverse a linked list or whatever as their next question.
libraryatnight 1 days ago [-]
smells like 'can't say anything anymore' coded whining.
Mistletoe 22 hours ago [-]
No I really would be uncomfortable at work asking that question to an interviewee.
m3kw9 21 hours ago [-]
“We need you to insult him as bad as you can, and we will then send it to NK, wait a month, and if you are still around you are hired”
simplesimon890 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
curiousgal 1 days ago [-]
> "My favorite interview question, because we've interviewed quite a few of these folks, is something to the effect of 'How fat is Kim Jong Un?' They terminate the call instantly, because it's not worth it to say something negative about that,"
They likely terminate the call because you come across as so naive and simplistic that you're unlikely to be in possession of any good IP worth stealing.
Edit: I am confused, on one hand these are sophisticated state sponsored actors, on the other, they can't respond "I don't know?". Which one is it? I think this whole "North Koreans are afraid of offending Kim Jong Un" is an overplayed trope.
otherme123 1 days ago [-]
Or it can be auto-triggered. I remember a history of a Call of Duty game were a number of players were being annoying, cheating and making the game horrible to play. Someone wrote in the chat "Tiananmen Square massacre" and instantly more than half the players were disconnected.
Or maybe if you keep the convo about KJU being fat, you trigger an alarm that schedule a police visit to your house, in a state were they first act and then ask.
lo_zamoyski 20 hours ago [-]
In a communist/totalitarian regime, you don't want to give informants any leverage. The fear of it being recorded and used against you is enough. Also, if the regime were to give permission to speak in this manner, it risks normalizing irreverence toward Kim Jong Un, including employees working in espionage.
He dug a bit deeper and found out that the North Koreans have special programs for gifted kids. They send them to the schools for dedicated CS education. They also (presumably without proof) have access to the source code of various commercial closed source software.
It's a good pay job (comparing to other NKs) and they get to do what they love, so they are pretty loyal. But I always wonder, wouldn't they burn out eventually? Maybe they can switch fields or become teachers, though.
They also might not have a choice depending on how much their skills are worth to the gov't... if North Korean.
I hate to admit, but sometimes I wish someone forced me to sit in a hotel to learn fundamental CS stuffs that I want to do but passion comes and goes so I never got the grit to actually learn much.
I don’t think that’s appropriate. You’re jesting about it, NKs working abroad are basically prisoners and their families taken hostages (as in don’t come back or do something we don’t like and we’ll kill your wife and children)
Hardly comparable.
You don’t need to read “A Fire Upon the Deep” first… the stories are more or less unrelated except for setting. (There is one character who is sort of in both, but going into detail about what that means would spoil it too much).
Both are excellent and worth the time. Skip the other Vinge books until you are sure you want to read everything he wrote, they are “merely” 8/10 instead of 10/10.
Vinge was a CS professor who really made sure everything “fit” together in his works. Although “A Fire Upon the Deep”, started in the late 80s and published in 1992, posits that civilizations much more advanced and capable than ours would be communicating primarily through something like Usenet, which feels a little quaint.
NB that Vinge was the one who popularized the concept of “the technological Singularity”. His books have interesting authors notes where he talks about coming up with ways to write about a far future when he believes that the Singularity is right on track for 2050-2100.
Luckily I quickly discovered that the Children of Time series filled my need for more spider scifi.
I don’t get why more companies don’t leverage this better.
I would imagine the state takes the vast majority of their pay.
Why not simply pretend they are from South Korea?
Tinfoil: Maybe these ones are supposed to fail so everyone feels like they are so clever in stopping them.
> Konichiwa, Brzęczyszczykiewicz-san.
For anyone not familiar, this is a Polish joke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U
The 'rz' phoneme has the same sound as the letter 'ż' which is a different sound from the letter 'ź' (the latter being a softer sound - one that foreigners usually find easier to reproduce).
Whether you write a word with the 'rz' or the 'ż' is governed by a set of orthographic rules that are of course peppered with numerous exceptions.
> It represents the same sound in the Polish alphabet, remaining in active usage by some as an alternative for the letter Ż (called "Z with overdot").
> In Polish, the character Ƶ is used as an allographic variant of the letter ⟨Ż⟩ (called "Z with overdot") although once used in Old Polish.
Funnily, there's a counter-argument to "Straż Miejska" from article you linked, with "Straƶ Miejska" in another Wikipedia entry[1] :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_with_stroke
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Straz_plakietka.svg
sz contrast with ś/si, as does cz and ć/ci, or ż/rz and ź/zi, or dż and dź/dzi
(might have swapped one or two)
Add in some good etymological reasons why the consonant+i combinations are not respelled and the whole thing makes a lot of sense.
"rz" is a bit of a special case since it's pretty much etymological - what used to be "r", and corresponds to "r" in the same roots in other Slavic languages, but became to be pronounced like "ź" in Polish. What to do about it depends on whether you want your orthography to be purely phonemic (a better choice IMO, just look at South Slavic languages - it works great for them!) or retain the etymological distinction. But even then it would be better off as a diacritic.
What would be really neat tho is having a single Latin-based notation that works consistently across all Slavic languages, similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Turkic_alphabet. For example, we could use cedilla to represent post-alveolars: ç and ş - and then use acute accent to indicate palatalization ("softness"). So e.g in Czech you'd only need s/ş, in Polish you'd use s/ş/ş́, and in Russian you'd have all four possible combinations s/ś/ş/ş́.
Expectation: intelligence services, spies, secrets
Reality: bunch of ponzi schemers, arrogant sub revolutionaries, greedy people, envious people. All together in a pseudo network of trust, always at each other's throats. Unrepentable and thus, impossible to forgive. Sad but not much.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk...
Sounds like complete bullshit. Your response is exactly the sort of thing I see as a social scam. Situation awareness? That makes no fucking sense.
if someone thinks there's a conspiracy behind everything so they trust nothing and then it turns out that the thing could not be trusted but because of a different reason than the suspected conspiracy doesn't make the conspiracy theorist wrong about the lack of trust. just the reason for the lack of trust.
compare that to someone that trusts everything. they get screwed because they were not paying attention to trust should be suspect. yet the kooky conspiracy person was better off even if for the not so right reason
You are talking about personas, like they're action figures or something.
"the conspiracy theorist"
"the spy"
"the trusty shieldbarer"
Then you did a mini plot to tell a small storyline that attaches itself to the conversation. I can do that too if I want.
If you do it to help people, then it's good. If you are doing it to confuse someone or get advantage, then it's a dick move.
Raising those issues about "suspecting everything" is something that I've been exposed to my whole life. Specially in the last years, it has been more intense.
Instead, I believe the stronger position is to believe in human kindness. A healthy mixture of skepticism and trust that cannot be put in a box. Being good without being a fool. Which entails the act of sometimes entertaining the dumb conspiracy agitator or other disruptive personalities.
The more you do it, the harder it is for toxic people. They quickly get into a very previsible box and even pretend they like it.
Thats the good thing about being a theocratic dictator. Your rules don't have to be consistent, rational or even make sense. Oh if you slander the supreme leader while holding a goose feather that you burn at his monthly worship you are forgiven. Or whatever.
If so, there might still be limits.
You could make the challenge an n-part, back-and-forth exchange, of increasingly worse insults of that personage.
Complete with escalating to enthusiastic shouting, slapping the table for emphasis, making crude illustrative gestures, etc.
Perhaps there's only so much that an authoritarian work center will tolerate.
For legitimate candidates, doing this at the start of an interview might be sending a confusing message about the corporate office environment. On the other hand, it would serve as an icebreaker, to help candidates feel comfortable sharing. And it will tell you more about the candidate's creativity than Leetcode regurgitation does. Well, until students start buying "Cracking the Techbro Interview: Trash-Talking Edition" books, spending months memorizing lists of insults to recite in interviews, and rehearsing their delivery, with enthusiastic full-arm gesticulating. Actually, that would still be better for the field than Leetcode interviews.
You have two factors working against this. The first is that in a communist/totalitarian regime, you don't want to give informants any opportunities for leverage. The fear of it being (mis)used against you is enough to take it off the table as an option.
The second is that were the regime give permission to speak this way, it risks normalizing irreverence toward Kim Jong Un, beginning with a large swathe of employees working in espionage.
Similar to how part of the Knights Templar's training was to learn to spit on a cross without spitting on Christ "in their minds" in case they were ever captured and made to do so by their captors.
Eerily reminiscent of 1984's doublethink.
Doublethink is to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The spitting on the cross thing is to say/do something without actually believing it.
Very much the current USA zeitgeist.
In any case, we're talking about a dictatorial communist regime, where informants and informing on people is widespread, and where having a case file of excuses to eliminate people is standard. We shouldn't trivialize this by appealing to standards that don't apply here.
The GIs discovered they could just ask the officers about baseball. A wrong answer, and the officer got shot.
I heard this from my dad (WW2 vet). I don't recall seeing it in any documentary. He told me I would have been shot :-/ as I had zero interest in baseball.
This sounds like it can't have been true, or at least, can't have been common practice, because the false positive rate would be way too high for shooting a person.
Edit: It reminds me of my favorite definitely fake boomer story: That people used to call out speedtraps on the highway by pulling over and standing in a salute… because cops can compel you not to alert people of a speedtrap… but they can’t compel you to not salute… because that would violate the first amendment? Before the internet dudes used to just sit around telling each other stories like this.
Also, they could just have them count three strikes using their fingers
So it's perfectly reasonable that a person of German ancestry would just not care about American sports.
You're referring to instances of captured spies (potentially captured by said baseball questions) being tried as spies and executed.
The former did not happen, the latter did happen (which I don't think anyone here would've disputed).
What percentage of Germans who grew up in the US and speak perfect American English can't answer those basic questions correctly?
I'll rephrase the question a bit here: How could any idiot white male raised in the US in the last 120 years possibly not know about baseball?
What I think was happening was that the US GIs would ask the infiltrating German about current baseball. Not Ty Cobb stuff, but Ted Williams stuff.
Also, for the non-baseball fans here, you have to remember that there were only 16 (28) teams back then [0], essentially no trading of players, and no interleague play. So for your team, you really had to know the core 8 players and a few pitchers. Adding in the other 7 teams gets you to ~80 or so (maximum) and they would reappear on the exact same teams year after year. And there really wasn't any other sports worth mentioning in 1943 [1]. Cognitively, it's a lot less than today.
Also, the Germans wouldn't have access to the information about the 'current-ish' state of the game. It was mostly in newspapers back then, and with the war, getting information from the sports pages out of St. Louis wasn't happening.
Same as it ever was, sports is the lingua franca of the US.
[0] 8 in MLB-NL and 8 in MLB-AL, 6 in NL-NL and 6 in NL-AL (yes, the Negro leagues are the major league, but black GIs weren't on the front lines where Germans would be infiltrating (yes, it's more complicated than this simple comment))
[1] The NFL was pretty nascent still.
I was once invited to a Super Bowl party, and I thought sure, I'll come. So I went, and watched the game for a bit on the big TV. I was asked, which team are you rooting for? I answered "the ones in the red shirts".
That didn't go over well.
A better one I heard is asking about the second verse of the national anthem. The enemies studied it to know it, but ask your average GI(or most americans) what the 2nd or 3rd verse is, lol.... that's a good trick.
Because their knowledge of teams and scores and wins and players would be 4 years out of date.
Following American baseball news from Germany in detail would be virtually impossible in the 1940s.
This did not happen.
However, at the time, in the massive confusion of a wholly unexpected large-scale German attack, rumours and paranoia were rife, including that of German parachute landings behind the lines.
A result of this was the widespread belief, at the time, that Germans had infiltrated and were giving fake orders, etc, and so troops were indeed widely being suspected, and asked for example the capital of Illinois and so on (and being asked by privates, who did not know that the actual capital is Springfield rather than Chicago, to generals, who did know).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif
It was something like Are you as smart as a 5th grader?
A question would be something like "Who was the 5th president?" and the answer was "Benjamin Franklin" or similar. :)
Implicitly, I suppose that makes the lights on the windward side blitzen.
Related: after the war, they were concerned that there were Nazi spies still in England they hadn't uncovered. When the files in Berlin were seized, they went through every single asset sent to England. Not only had they successfully identified every agent, and turned quite a few into double-agents, they also noted that very few agents going the other way had ever been detected.
> There was even a case in which an agent started running deception operations independently from Portugal using little more than guidebooks, maps, and a very vivid imagination to convince his Abwehr handlers that he was spying in the UK. This agent, Juan Pujol García (Garbo), created a network of phantom sub-agents and eventually convinced the British authorities that he could be useful. He and his fictitious network were absorbed into the main double-cross system and he became so respected by Abwehr that they stopped landing agents in Britain after 1942. The Germans became dependent on the spurious information that was fed to them by Garbo's network and the other double-cross agents.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_17
https://youtube.com/shorts/EJmmq0yc08U?si=dnFXr0IgJh18pmp-
Curious if you have any links that go into this further. Were they Americans of German descent who rejoined family in Germany, or? I'm sure it's not monolithic but curious if there was a pattern.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/german-ame...
The Roman Catholic liturgy is so stringently regulated that it is in fact very difficult for any priest or layman to stay current after a decade or more has passed. Perhaps this is one of the genius moves of the vernacular liturgy: that the Latin liturgy hardly changed its words for 500 years, but English and other languages are being constantly retranslated and reinterpreted with new Missal editions.
Case in point: the neutering of the Church for 40 years. The Church was made an "it" in English, and only after a top-down correction was issued did she become feminine again. This did a lot of trauma to many Catholics on visceral levels.
More up to date changes include the addition of "Holy" to "...for our good and the good of all His [Holy] Church]." this one is guaranteed to catch out anyone who's not been to Mass in 10+ years, such as at a wedding, funeral, or Christmastime.
A very recent priest's change is "...who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, [One] God, forever and ever. Amen." the "One" is now omitted, as of last year or so, and in fact every church was compelled to scratch it out in their existing Missals until new editions could be printed.
It is these sort of very subtle yet urgent changes that can really trip someone up if they're not 100% current with liturgical directives. So if you ever suspect you got a fake priest marrying you, see if he says "One God" or not!
Otto Skorzeny was an interesting man.
Will never understand the mindset of corporate executives.
Video filters are still pretty obvious in real-time, and, like the one example given in the article, if the person says they are from Poland but can't speak Polish, that's a good sign, too.
and now they’re trying to reduce staff, hence RTO.
nothing confusing about the situation.
A more likely reason is that you just called them out. See how most scams work. There is no reason to stick around instead of pursuing easier targets.
On top of that, if necessary and meanwhile, others of the same team might do better at the same time for the same employer and succeed by contrast.
Beyond that, if I looked east Asian, I could also see myself walking on this question for another reason. It would feel like a comment on my ethnic background, which has no place in an interview.
Unless I knew what the reason was for asking, it would be like if an interviewer suddenly talked about how much weight Adele was gaining.
I wont be surprised if the list of "must-denounce" will be growing and in the future there'd be a litany of "mock the enemy" for every interview.
https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-kor...
It’s a bit more in-depth and offers a few other ways to identify the fake devs.
- so fat that when she jumped into a swimming pool, NASA found water on Mars.
https://youtu.be/mC68d-Mj270
[0] https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam
Only really works in industries that are “small world”
Even in small-world industries, assuming they occasionally accept outsiders, they will still encounter some form of this problem.
I guess it comes down to industry. We're on hn so emphasis is on technical ability and in that context what you say is true. I'm in a space that requires trustworthiness is part of the core value proposition so there is little acceptance of outsiders and much emphasis on back channel checks that the candidate is solid. NK fake candidate etc is just not a thing in that context
I'd be shocked if a simple 15-20 minute conversation with the interviewee's perspective manager wouldn't eliminate all chance of this happening. Video filters are still obvious in real time, any decent interviewer can tell if a person is being fed answers, just ask them more detailed information about their background and projects and not just leetcode-type questions.
All of this just goes to show how abysmal (in some cases anyway) the hiring process is for offshore workers in the first place.
It looks to me that it describes what a sham the interview process is instead.
* are they really fake? I'm led to believe they actually do the work...
Within 5 seconds? I doubt they could load google maps that fast.
> Also I have no idea what my front door color is
No hire!
We mostly enter through a side door, and the back door.
... and I also couldn't tell you what color either of those are.
An answer that's also suspicious, because it means they know what you're implying by asking, and they've prepared for it.
In fact I’d bet a good chunk of people, especially tech literate people, could tell you the most recent date of Google Street View for their house.
[edit]
Actually over a decade out of date (timestamp says March 2012, but somehow also copyright 2025).
I don't quite understand the "laptop farm" concept. Can anyone explain it?
A laptop farm hosts the corporate laptop (domestically) that is sent to the remote worker. Hardware is provided to work the power remotely, along with all other functions.
https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/us-wom...
https://sashaingber.substack.com/p/the-23-year-old-who-infil...
https://cyberscoop.com/doj-indicts-five-in-north-korean-fake...
https://therecord.media/arizona-woman-pleads-guilty-north-ko...
I suspect these farms have full-fledged remote KVM setups.
I'd think it just takes a blessing from the dear leader to mock his rotundness in front of the evil capitalists, as long as it brings in the dough and the corporate secrets.
I would think the people doing this are not the lowest level foot soldiers but are somewhat closer to elites and as such can afford to be a tiny bit cynical if the dear leader signals his approval.
There are other tell tale signs that you can watch out for (at least for now)
The Muslim fundamentalists to did 9/11 shaved their beards to look less suspicious.
Call their phone number. All the scammers had non-working phone numbers in their resumes.
I wrote an article about this based on my experience: https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-kor...
No body positivity in North Korea?
> and maybe also avoid hiring fully remote employees.
There it is.
In-person interviews are the most robust solution to the problem.
Sadly, most corporate executives will learn the wrong lessons from this and instead use this as an opportunity to push RTO even more.
> ”How fat is Kim Jong Un?”
I played a game of Taboo (a party game) yesterday night. I asked the question "the surname of the leader of party ..." (the third largest one in my country). The guy I asked it to looked at me and answered "I have no idea." He's old enough to vote even if he didn't have to do it yet. Leaders of foreign countries? Maybe he doesn't know where to place North Korea on a map, even the general area.
OK, we could say that the lack of a general culture could be a hint not to hire that person so that could be a legitimate termination of the interview anyway.
They do seem to be decent programmers though based on my experience with these scam interviews.
6'4 - 210lbs
If they can say the line with a straight face they are either an incredible poker player or the wrong kind of American.
There are thousands of laid off tech workers desperately trying to get even an interview, let alone a job. Yet, North Koreans having a success rate better than zero seems like a major problem.
The article even says they are interviewing candidates with long complicated names with defunct LinkedIn profiles. Yet, seemingly a normal candidate cannot get past the resume filter.
Tons of articles posted here over the recent years of how broken hiring is and the horror stories. This is taking broken to a whole new level.
In todays's lesson, we develop an understanding of the old term "You get what you pay for."
The company I worked for (as a hiring manager), paid fairly low wages, and expected employees to stay around for a long time, so I often judged candidates by more than “on paper” qualifications.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/security
The dear leader approves of your workplace!
Really? What kind of company would make a big deal out of that?
Asking a candidate about how fat someone is definitely does sound like something that would get an interviewer in trouble.
Many people are deeply insecure about their weight, many women feel very uncomfortable when men make any comment about anyone's weight, body or appearance. The candidate might post on Glassdoor or LinkedIn about the hostile (and possibly sexist or "bro-y" or noninclusive or discriminatory) environment.
Even aside from the HR type concerns, it could legitimately negatively impact the candidate's performance. Imagine an overweight applicant being asked that question, feeling flustered and embarrassed while answering "... about as fat as me?" and then trying to reverse a linked list or whatever as their next question.
They likely terminate the call because you come across as so naive and simplistic that you're unlikely to be in possession of any good IP worth stealing.
Edit: I am confused, on one hand these are sophisticated state sponsored actors, on the other, they can't respond "I don't know?". Which one is it? I think this whole "North Koreans are afraid of offending Kim Jong Un" is an overplayed trope.
Or maybe if you keep the convo about KJU being fat, you trigger an alarm that schedule a police visit to your house, in a state were they first act and then ask.
You can just generalise the question like these interviewers. I’d criticise Kim Jong Un just to see what was up with this interview question.