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Comment by crmd | Hacker News Reader

> websites on North Korean web domains were largely unreachable because North Korea’s Domain Name System (DNS) stopped communicating the routes that data packets should take.

BGP, not DNS, communicates routes. If Reuters is getting basic IT factchecking wrong, I wonder how many errors are in articles about topics I know nothing about.

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Most journalism gets these things wrong - not just tech. Old trucks, bread, farming. Any subject you are educated on you'll notice that the "news" is fundamentally broken. Think about that the next time you're getting some news. That same reporter banged up the BGP/DNS on this one, that truck is from before posi-traction, the Model-B was the big deal tractor...flaws of communication about complex systems

What kind of things does journalism consistently get right, then?

This is as sloppy as writing “the DNA is the powerhouse of the cell” and no one noticing.

Journalism is basically a dead profession. People writing celebrity gossip bring in more ad revenue than journalists.

Society is not setup to reward educated professionals who report on complex topics.

it was setup to reward them not so long ago in those media outlets. journalism has moved elsewhere, it still exists, made by people who do it for the reward and others for alternative reasons, simply not in those kind of outlets which have mostly become ads pipes.

> What kind of things does journalism consistently get right, then?

Generally speaking, journalists quote their sources accurately, even when the identity of the source is concealed (eg. "A senior administration official", "sources familiar with the matter", etc.). That doesn't save the reader from the sources being wrong, having an axe to grind, or straight up lying, but journalists try to mitigate those issues with multiple sources and a healthy amount of skepticism.

Keep in mind that the criticism here mostly applies to general-purpose journalists, rather than ones with a specific "beat" they have experience (and even expertise) with. "Science and technology" and "health & medicine" reporters aren't really on a beat, the categories are far too broad, but general interest publications simply can't employ all the people they would need to specialize in every fractal branch on the tree of human knowledge.

So reporters maybe specialize a little, and rely on a roster of experts they can call up for a quote or maybe some background explanation. Except they are always on a deadline, and if an expert doesn't get back to them in fast enough, they just do the best they can, file the story and move on to the next one.

The flip side of this is that "experts" who are super reliable in terms of getting back to reporters with a hot take get quoted a lot even when they don't know what they are talking about. Reporters know this, but they have to quote somebody before their deadline.

I do DNS routing in my closed/fixed network. I don't assume NK is that different. You can see the BGP statistics here:

https://stat.ripe.net/app/launchpad/S1_KP_C32C23C5C26C8

and

https://bgp.he.net/AS131279

Not a lot of BGP happening here if we're trusting the data. It's also worth noting that they're paraphrasing another outlet (Seoul-based NK Pro, a news site that monitors North Korea).

Also: https://github.com/mandatoryprogrammer/NorthKoreaDNSLeak

Based on limited data I think the report could very well be accurate.

None of that matters to a layperson, they just need to know N Korean internet was shut down for a bit. It's a trivial bit of infomration that maybe 1 in 1000 reporters actually knows there is a difference between BGP and DNS. It's unimportant and not worth acting like all mainstream media is falling apart like the people who watch Fox News want to think.

which mainstream media isn't falling apart?

> In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect, after physicist Murray Gell-Mann. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding

https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect

If you've ever been the subject of a Krebs article, you'll be more disappointed to learn how wrong even the experts can be.

I think they're attempting to paraphrase (or it's how they were told) DNS converts a hostname to an IP so the packets can reach it. In doing so, they lost people who know what all the terms mean.

Congratulations you have realized that most of the new is bs and most of the people that read it don't even realize it.

Achievement unlocked

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