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Comment by TomK32 | Hacker News Reader

joke's on you, as the Wikipedia article states it's an engineering in-joke. Of course, someone still had to pick it up and someone else had to approve it, but the idea for it still came from the bottom.

The ODNI gave a more mundane explanation for the patch design in an internal magazine, stating that it originated from an engineering in-joke regarding a piece of cabling called an "octopus harness" that caused problems during testing for the satellite, leading the engineering team to joke that "the octopus harness had taken over the world."

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Your bias is showing by giving the DNI the benefit of the doubt; especially considering this occurred after Snowden in the same year.

Your bias is showing by blaming this on Obama, when he would not have any input or even knew about that patch being created. He had far more serious things to worry about than creating a patch. I'm not sure why you would think POTUS is even in the loop on creating patches.

> by blaming this on Obama

To be fair, they blamed it on the administration. DNI is the administration.

But like, if you're DNI, of course you're going to announce a patch like this. I can't imagine being in that role without a part of you enjoying trolling the conspiracy theorists and other humourless types.

> Your bias is showing by giving the DNI the benefit of the doubt

Your taking the joke seriously is the entire joke. Sort of like people getting into conniptions over the name DOGE. That's the point of naming it DOGE: to prompt that reaction.

I think that is called, trolling, no?

Yes. It's an intelligence satellite. Counterintelligence is professional trolling. The IC trolling conspiracy theorists is water-is-wet stuff.

> Counterintelligence is professional trolling.

They always say the next generation, being more 'digitally native', will be amazing with computers. That hasn't been my experience. But if what you say is true, they are going to be great at counterintelligence.

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