[HN Gopher] An interview question that will protect you from Nor...
___________________________________________________________________
An interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake
workers
Author : dotcoma
Score : 229 points
Date : 2025-05-01 03:21 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _" 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.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| Surely it's not stupidiif it works?
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| Nice Try Kim Jong Un
| treetalker wrote:
| Wow, it even works on HN!
| voidspark wrote:
| North Korean spotted
| otherme123 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| https://fortune.com/2025/04/10/north-korean-it-workers-spamm...
|
| 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.
| koliber wrote:
| No. All it took is to call them out for being North Korean and
| they terminated the call.
| gossterrible wrote:
| 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.
| stevage wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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...
| stevage wrote:
| Oh I get it now, thanks.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Kim jong un is so fat he has his own event horizon.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You're hired.
| steelbird wrote:
| Kim jong un is so fat he jumped and got stuck.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Quoting the Korean Comic, _"When I take my shirt off I have a
| one pack"_.
|
| https://youtu.be/mC68d-Mj270
| mannyv wrote:
| He's so fat that when he jumps he jumps the Earth tilts a bit
| more.
| atonse wrote:
| 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)
| atonse wrote:
| My son and I have done "Yo-Momma battles" with ChatGPT, and one
| that it gave me where I laughed out loud was:
|
| - so fat that when she jumped into a swimming pool, NASA found
| water on Mars.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I'll keep that in mind. I'd probably be crucified by HR for
| saying fat at work though.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Differently slim ;)
| joshdavham wrote:
| > 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?
| libraryatnight wrote:
| smells like 'can't say anything anymore' coded whining.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| No I really would be uncomfortable at work asking that
| question to an interviewee.
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| 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.
| al_borland wrote:
| I assume any similar question that could lead someone to be
| critical of North Korea would do.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > I'd probably be crucified by HR for saying fat at work
| though.
|
| The dear leader approves of your workplace!
| koliber wrote:
| Ask the suspicious candidates what they think of the murderous
| North Korean regime. Avoids body shaming.
| joshdavham wrote:
| 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.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| "Please read me the imdb plot synopsis of the film The
| Interview."
| koliber wrote:
| 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.
|
| I wrote an article about this based on my experience:
| https://koliber.com/articles/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-north-kor...
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| 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.
| tobr wrote:
| To save you the click and skim, the question is:
|
| > "How fat is Kim Jong Un?"
| pmontra wrote:
| A legitimate answer could be "who?"
|
| 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.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Culture fit questions everywhere. Wouldn't want to hire
| someone of the wrong social class. They might "shoot hoops"
| or something similarly vulgar.
| koliber wrote:
| 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.
| blitzar wrote:
| > "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.
| MaxPock wrote:
| I wonder what the American version of this question would be
| shemtay wrote:
| 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
| fortran77 wrote:
| According to Perplexity, he is 308 pounds! Wow!
| rdtsc wrote:
| >'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.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kmoser wrote:
| 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?
| progbits wrote:
| That would be a failing answer.
| chneu wrote:
| The only correct answer is that he is a rippling mass of pure
| beefcake muscle.
| rdtsc wrote:
| 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.
| netsharc wrote:
| I'd ask him to estimate, being able to do Fermi estimations
| is a skill engineers need to have:
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/19567/how-did-
| en...
| koliber wrote:
| 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)
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif
| sterlind wrote:
| 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!
| eesmith wrote:
| 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
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Maybe a spy could finally explain to me what it means for
| light to be donzerly.
| autarch wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Oh, it makes so much more sense now.
|
| Implicitly, I suppose that makes the lights on the
| windward side _blitzen_.
| qzw wrote:
| Ok, I found the German imposter right here.
| paradox460 wrote:
| The general don zerlyite was an important figure in the
| defense of Ft McHenrry
| mannyv wrote:
| What are the last two words of the star spangled banner?
| "Play ball!"
| aidenn0 wrote:
| 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.
| timrichard wrote:
| I remember seeing something similar on Masters of the Air,
| where the Resistance would question downed airmen :
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/EJmmq0yc08U?si=dnFXr0IgJh18pmp-
| fallinghawks wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/german-
| ame...
| fallinghawks wrote:
| Very interesting, thanks much for the link!
| zingababba wrote:
| Mark Felton has a good video on it:
| https://youtu.be/1dninvXjUzA?si=Qdm6D97qPb8Dmzbl
|
| Otto Skorzeny was an interesting man.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| When you're fighting for your life, yes it would be
| acceptable, and yes it happened.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| There's no evidence people were summarily executed for
| bad answers. People were detained through this method
| though
| anton-c wrote:
| 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.
| patall wrote:
| 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.
| solatic wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Wouldn't that also apply to the spies, if they grew up in
| the US?
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| 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
| qzw wrote:
| 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.
| Balgair wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yup. They managed to catch and frequently turn literally
| everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System
|
| > 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 Garcia (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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'm very curious to know if he ever wore them both. Would
| be a fun double-take to someone in the know.
| i_don_t_know wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_17
| casenmgreen wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If you can check it easily, so can they. Also I have no idea
| what my front door color is.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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!
| alabastervlog wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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.
| chatmasta wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| dmurray wrote:
| I'm reminded of SMBC Comics' recent proposal for detecting the
| use of AI:
|
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/security
| progbits wrote:
| > "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.
| graemep wrote:
| When you are dealing with intelligence services and others who
| work through deceit that sort of thinking is not tinfoil.
| alganet wrote:
| I have come to a conclusion about this "tinfoil" thing.
|
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the difference?
| vintermann wrote:
| Isn't that what intelligence services and spies are like
| too? Adam Curtis wrote a great article on it once:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.u
| k...
| voytec wrote:
| Friend's comment:
|
| > Konichiwa, Brzeczyszczykiewicz-san.
| veggieroll wrote:
| > Brzeczyszczykiewicz
|
| For anyone not familiar, this is a Polish joke.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U
| pavlov wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder why Polish didn't replace the z digrams
| with accented letters (c, z etc.) like many other Slavic
| languages.
| voytec wrote:
| Why would we? It "just works". We've only changed how we
| write the letter "z" some 30-20 years ago. It was
| previously "z". Also, "z" and "z" are not accents but
| separate alphabet letters.
| zbyforgotp wrote:
| There was no typeface change for "z" - 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 wrote:
| Early primary schooling in the early 90s and some
| preschool teaching in the late 80s taught me to write "z"
| as a "z"[0].
|
| > It represents the same sound in the Polish alphabet,
| remaining in active usage by some as an alternative for
| the letter Z (called "Z with overdot").
|
| > In Polish, the character Z is used as an allographic
| variant of the letter <Z> (called "Z with overdot")
| although once used in Old Polish.
|
| Funnily, there's a counter-argument to "Straz Miejska"
| from article you linked, with "Straz 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
| cenamus wrote:
| Additionally, Polish also has more different consonants
| that e.g. Czech, where the hacek accents were first
| introduced.
|
| sz contrast with s/si, as does cz and c/ci, or z/rz and
| z/zi, or dz and dz/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.
| abraxas wrote:
| Ah but we have those too :)
|
| The 'rz' phoneme has the same sound as the letter 'z' which
| is a different sound from the letter 'z' (the latter being
| a softer sound - one that foreigners usually find easier to
| reproduce).
|
| Whether you write a word with the 'rz' or the 'z' is
| governed by a set of orthographic rules that are of course
| peppered with numerous exceptions.
| keiferski wrote:
| At this point it's a unique aspect of the language, so much
| so that changing sz to s for example would feel like a
| betrayal. There are also a few letters without similar
| sounds in other Slavic languages (a and e) so you'd end up
| retaining those anyway.
| int_19h wrote:
| 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 :)
| regnull wrote:
| Why not have both?
| forinti wrote:
| Cyrillic would fit so much better.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Might work, but they'd have to learn to mask their NK accent.
| croisillon wrote:
| You seriously never noticed John Krasinski is Asian? Hats off
| to you for not seeing race!
| koliber wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| esafak wrote:
| I interviewed this loser too.
| nbittich wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nyokodo wrote:
| Or, we can just start doing interviews in person again.
| grogenaut wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Or for some industries back channel checks in network
|
| Only really works in industries that are "small world"
| nyokodo wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| >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
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| 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.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Massive alpha in this for devs who can shake someone's hand and
| make appropriate eye contact
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| Big bonuses if you can do small talk (I can't) and like a
| sports team (I don't)
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _> 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 wrote:
| Not sure what you suggest with this factoid. We hire the
| cheapest out of multiple equally qualified candidates.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They actually study and are incredibly good programmers
| nottorp wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Brings a whole new meaning to the idea of a "coding boot
| camp".
| ferguess_k wrote:
| haha a true camp...
| _factor wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| notyourwork wrote:
| Didn't the nazis try something similar?
| dleary wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| Plato detected
| protonbob wrote:
| Burn out doesn't seem so bad when you compare it to your family
| and friends who barely have enough to eat.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Yeah definitely. I wish we were able to read more insider
| stories.
| deeThrow94 wrote:
| I wish we were able to read _any_ trustworthy insider
| stories. Trying to tease apart propaganda from earnest
| storytelling is quite difficult ini english.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| 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.
| matteoraso wrote:
| 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.
| deeThrow94 wrote:
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Burn out, or are shot out of a cannon.
| counterpartyrsk wrote:
| CAPTCHAs in real life.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Someone should make a Netflix series about a North Korean fake
| worker because their lives and work sounds very interesting
| (different).
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| There is a very close analogue in Korean, called "say f*cking Kim
| Jung-un now gimjeongeun gaesaeggi hae bwa", 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >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.
| Herring wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Eventually they will get permission to say it during these
| operations
| m3kw9 wrote:
| "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"
| bookrecsgalore wrote:
| Book recommendation for this thread:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_(novel)
| eestrada wrote:
| 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.
| ugh123 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| lsy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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.
|
| [0] https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| So require a 4k wide angle camera. These are high skill high
| pay jobs it's hardly an unreasonable burden.
| bilater wrote:
| NK planning a heist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM
| eunos wrote:
| > "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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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.
| not2b wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| vt_mruhlin wrote:
| 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.
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