Comment by in_a_society

19 hours ago

This comment reminds me of a joke where the punchline is that a person is so poor that burglars break in to their house and leave money.

Similarly, I could see ransomware groups hacking in and feeling bad for GH so they improve a few things to help them get to at leave nine fives of uptime.

Many years ago there was an attack that went around that used the server’s BMC as an entry point. Thing is, BMCs are universally shit, so as part of the attack, the attackers also fixed a bunch of bugs so their connection could persist. I was working in hardware management at the time, and when we heard about that, we all gave that one a hard think…

It should be in their interest actually, since much of the malware is spread via GitHub.

This reminds me of a joke my neighbor used to tell:

If catch a burglar in my house, I will ask them what they are doing. If they respond with "I'm searching for money!", I'll suggest "Let's search together, and whatever we find, we split 50/50"

Just in case you are not aware, a joke loses its fun factor if you explain it.

  • On hn, a joke increases its fun factor by being over-explained in excruciating detail with several digressions into related jokes and the history and philosophy of joking, and someone ends up showing a site they made with all the possible variations of that joke and something about the scrolljacking css annoys one of the commenters enough that they break in and fix it.

    • A variation of that joke is used in Zen Buddhism as a teaching story. A famous monk, who lived in voluntary poverty in a mountain hut, wakes up in the middle of the night because a robber had broken in - except the robber couldn't find anything of value. So the monk listened to the rummaging sound for a while, and feeling bad for the robber's family, offers his blanket. The robber is so surprised by the kindness of the monk that he gives up his stealing ways and decides to become a good guy.

      2 replies →

  • They weren't telling the joke, they were using it as a reference point. They also didn't explain it, they just gave the punchline without any setup.

  • Unfortunately on HN people who don't get the joke tend to down vote it, so there's an incentive for pre emptive explanation.