[HN Gopher] Simple Sabotage for the 21st Century - Specific Sugg...
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       Simple Sabotage for the 21st Century - Specific Suggestions
        
       Author : RobLach
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2024-11-29 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (specificsuggestions.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (specificsuggestions.com)
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | That site is kind of a riot.
       | 
       | Click on "Exit".
        
         | morkalork wrote:
         | Hehe it's got a whole bunch of exit links. How to be a 10x
         | developer lmao
        
           | godelski wrote:
           | The best way to solve 10x more tickets is to create 100x more
           | than anyone else
        
         | Natsu wrote:
         | Without this site, I never would've realized that I could fight
         | for climate justice by leaving rotten fruit in the break room.
        
           | itronitron wrote:
           | rotting fruit emits carbon dioxide though
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | Kind of bad that it doesn't preload the target, though. I don't
         | want to have to wait for ten seconds to exit if I'm in a slow
         | connection.
        
       | yawpitch wrote:
       | Just love this. My particular favorite is sending the http://
       | version of everything instead of https://.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | In my workplace people also set the machines to forget the
         | redirects from time to time1. So that it's not a given that the
         | http:// will lead to anything.
         | 
         | 1 - How? I have no idea. They are more experts than the author.
        
         | kouru225 wrote:
         | Don't most browsers just auto direct to https though?
        
       | nmwp wrote:
       | Looks like government has already implemented a lot of these
       | suggestions.
        
         | praptak wrote:
         | This is the point. It is very desirable for sabotage to look
         | like standard corporate inefficiency.
         | 
         | Smash equipment, waste thousands and get caught. Delay a big
         | project, waste millions and nobody notices.
        
       | Oarch wrote:
       | We are all now immediately suspicious of certain coworkers...
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | or our suspicions are now confirmed.
        
           | tempodox wrote:
           | No, we're protected by Hanlon's razor.
        
       | OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
       | "These seem kind of dated.. I feel like you could have more
       | speci-"
       | 
       | > Require wet signatures (ink on paper) for documents instead of
       | digital
       | 
       | Jesus Christ.
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | Sorry, the document has been rejected. We require signatures in
         | blue ink, as specified in the employee handbook section
         | 132.86.9c(3), so we can tell the scanned copy from the
         | original. Please sign again. We're also sending over a form
         | (G03.2) that acknowledges we received your signature but that
         | it was incorrectly processed. This will ensure you don't get
         | written up for turning in the document late (section 075.53.7).
         | Please also signed the attached form (form Y64.5) that verifies
         | that the original signature was yours. All forms must be
         | received by the end of the business day. Please also scan the
         | documents and upload the copies to dev.null@fcorp.com
        
           | 1659447091 wrote:
           | I always carry around a black & blue pen (and sometimes red,
           | I like pens*). At some point I got into the habit of always
           | using blue to sign; not clear why. I distinctly remember
           | signing something in blue and then having to do it all over
           | again because they insisted that I only use black ink. I am
           | now suspicious of this this past event..
           | 
           | *not the expensive kind either, I've tried pens that were
           | $50+; fav is still a $2.75 Uniball Jetstream 1.0mm. Smooth
           | pens make pen&paper writing/signing fun
        
         | kouru225 wrote:
         | So this is what they meant when they said that war is hell
        
       | hluska wrote:
       | I may be having an old fuddy duddy moment but I really dislike
       | this site. My first suggestion was at least interesting. My
       | second was to superglue things into place.
       | 
       | Will supergluing things in place actually help the oppressed? Are
       | you the Harriet Tubman of adhesives? Or will someone who makes
       | minimum wage get yelled at and then forced to clean it?
       | 
       | This is Tik Tok level pranks applied to serious political issues
       | and frankly, oppressed people deserve better than this.
        
         | blacksmith_tb wrote:
         | At the very least it doesn't seem like sand-in-the-vaseline
         | tactics are equally useful when applied everywhere,
         | monkeywrenching some random business is not going to bring
         | about the fall of late capitalism exactly, but if they managed
         | to inspire millions of saboteurs it might - of course tough
         | luck about those hospitals and food trucks we depending on.
        
         | MadnessASAP wrote:
         | The intent is for it to appear like childish pranks, mild
         | incompetence, or best of all, nothing. The purpose is to delay
         | and degrade harmful organizations and processes by a thousand
         | tiny cuts.
         | 
         | It bears a strong resemblance to a handbook that went around
         | during WW2 for workers within Nazi occupied territories.
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | The point is to have plausible deniability (just like the
         | original simple sabotage manual). So they have to be realistic
         | enough. Superglueing stuff down isn't a plausible unless you're
         | on a boat. But requiring a signature with pen and paper is.
         | Take it a step further and require blue ink (because "its
         | distinguishable from a printed version" or choose a more
         | obscure color for similar reasoning). But make sure to not tell
         | them that until after the signature is received, so that they
         | have to do it all over again.
        
       | cjfd wrote:
       | Another one: when a colleague asks for something that is wrong,
       | implement it as requested without questioning.
        
         | rogerthis wrote:
         | This is not a rare thing in contractor/it service/consulting
         | world.
        
         | jdblair wrote:
         | also know as "malicious compliance"
        
       | SavageBeast wrote:
       | This reads like a guide on how to get fired for cause.
       | Additionally its quite childish. Why not just throw a tantrum and
       | save the trouble?
        
         | exe34 wrote:
         | You need to write a Jira ticket for that!
        
         | rolfus wrote:
         | It's not for you; it's for people who are forced to work for an
         | occupant. During WW2 the CIA actually published a manual for
         | this specific purpose; it's declassified and available here:
         | 
         | https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
        
       | NelsonMinar wrote:
       | This is very funny. I just wish the Slack unfurls showed the
       | specific suggestion from the link.
        
       | skinkestek wrote:
       | You see this happening in russia these days.
       | 
       | My favourite was from the start of the war when the guys who were
       | supposed to plant incriminating evidence on the scene were they
       | arrested some "terrorists" put the Sims 3 game on the scene
       | instead of 3 sim cards and literally signed the fake documents
       | they planted with "Signature Unclear". (Yes, real story, just
       | search for Sims 3 and Signature Unclear.)
       | 
       | As I understand it I understand this was FSB (or someone elses)
       | way of "getting even" after their boss had been publicly
       | humiliated for proposing to not invade Ukraine. (But that -
       | except for the public humiliation which is well documented - is
       | just speculation on my part although I might have heard it from
       | someone else thinking loud.)
       | 
       | Although sometimes I wonder if it was a genuine misunderstanding.
       | I feel I have unusually many Russian friends and ex-colleagues,
       | people who live outside of russia for good reasons and do not
       | support it. Z-russians on the other hand does not strike me as
       | the brightest bulbs in the box.
        
         | cyberax wrote:
         | > fake documents they planted with "Signature Unclear"
         | 
         | "Signature Unclear" is actually a real pseudonym of a pro-Nazi
         | author. So this particular part was at least believable.
         | 
         | The "Sims 3" disks (3 of them) and Bandera's books were far
         | less so.
        
           | skinkestek wrote:
           | > "Signature Unclear" is actually a real pseudonym of a pro-
           | Nazi author.
           | 
           | That was interesting, thanks!
           | 
           | Do you know if he is an actual Jew-hating nazi or just
           | someone who opposes russia?
           | 
           | (I've learned over the last 3 years that for most russians
           | when they think of nazism they don't think of genocide of
           | minorities, mega-projects, Lebensborn and all that bit rather
           | only about "war against russia")
        
             | cyberax wrote:
             | He's a real "inferior races must be exterminated" Nazi. I
             | searched for his works when this story first came out, and
             | yeah, he's bad.
        
               | skinkestek wrote:
               | ouch.
               | 
               | That is evil.
               | 
               | Then again, that alone us not enough for russia to strike
               | at someone: they have more than one group of openly nazi
               | (by western standards) soldiers fighting against Ukraine,
               | most famously rusisch.
        
         | lukan wrote:
         | "just search for Sims 3 and Signature Unclear"
         | 
         | I did, but got lots of vague rumor stories, but nothing solid.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | This is a takeoff on a well known WWII pamphlet, the Simple
       | Sabotage Field Manual.[1]
       | 
       | That's not the real worry today. Today we have to worry about
       | remote sabotage of key systems - water, power, comms. It's quite
       | possible that we will see major blackouts in the US, Russia,
       | Europe, or China as side effects of the various wars in progress.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-
       | sabotage...
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | I've always read that one as satire critique of the American
         | DoD. It has Svejk and Catch 22 all over it.
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | I suspect that if it was possible to do anything significant to
         | Russian infrastructure via hacking, it would have already
         | happened by now.
         | 
         | 2 million USD gets you a smartphone zero-day*, according to
         | rumours, something like a single ATACMS missile.
         | 
         | * geometric mean of 200k and 20M:
         | https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/russian-zero-day-seller-of...
        
       | temporallobe wrote:
       | > Log users out frequently for "security reasons".
       | 
       | This is exactly what happens on a contract I work on. Any
       | software that is authenticated through our OKTA SSO very
       | frequently signs users out and redirects to a logout page. This
       | is especially annoying when using the project management
       | software, where you typically have many tabs open to see various
       | requirements, epics, stories, tasks, etc. Any inactivity more
       | than 15 minutes, and all the tabs are logged out. Just like that,
       | everything is gone. It forces us to use strategies such as saving
       | redundant copies of things in notes and spreadsheets. I don't
       | think it's necessarily sabotage but it feels extremely negligent.
       | Moreover it's completely unnecessary since everything is behind a
       | VPN anyway.
       | 
       | Another similar thing that does feel as if it's somewhat
       | malicious is the very aggressive logout and shutdown policy of
       | our virtual desktops - these are the desktops we do everyday
       | active development on and where we set up IDEs, database clients,
       | web servers, testing tools, API references - anything you can
       | think of. We use this in combination with our regular desktops
       | where we attend meetings or do other non-development tasks such
       | as using the above-mentioned requirements software. It takes a
       | lot of time to set all of this up! If you're inactive for more
       | than 2 hours, your session is not only closed, it's completely
       | destroyed so that it can be reclaimed for another user. I don't
       | need to explain to experienced developers how incredibly
       | frustrating and counterproductive this is, but leadership has
       | been extremely dismissive of any complaints, and tell us that we
       | should use our time more wisely or that we shouldn't be inactive
       | for so long (which is complete BS, there are a thousand valid
       | reasons foe this). Apparently this is done for cost-cutting
       | reasons, but something feels more nefarious here, because this
       | very obviously leads to reduced productivity and demotivation.
       | This has actually lead to me purposefully overestimating
       | complexity and demanding a user story for every single little
       | trivial action I take, whereas before I used to just go in and
       | make quick fixes or knock out certain operational things in my
       | spare time. It's a waste of time for us and ends up being worse
       | for our customers.
        
         | downrightmike wrote:
         | As AGILE as it gets
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-29 23:00 UTC)