The Geeks on the Front Lines

I'm mixed. Animation aside, some of the decorative formatting that has always made for beautiful print pieces really seems to get in the way on the web. Not sure I can explain why exactly. I was impressed by the effects (in a novelty, how'd-they-pull-that-off sort of way), but I can tell you this: I didn't read a word of the article. I was too busy playing with the animations. I think it's fair to say the content was upstaged.

I have personally been enjoying articles laid out in this way. They are a unique format that could not have worked in a pre-internet era. For years it has felt like the magazines/old media/etc were just trying to bring an old format to a new medium. Now some are starting to actually leverage the medium to expand their old format.

I really try to avoid criticising (it's the easiest route) but come on!, if you are writing an article about hackers then a clean, clear semantically valid document would have impressed me a lot more.

That just hurt my eyes and the gaudy crap distracts from the writing (which in this instance was a blessed mercy).

Rolling Stone is better than this.

"Fedora, an operating system used in China" ...seriously?

I had my doubts about this article, but after that line, it's really hard for me to take it seriously.

Impressive presentation, if you're trying to show off. Terrible otherwise, and the content is just dumb. David Kushner has always struck me as one of those superficial tech journalists who writes about it all the time, but largely avoids attempting to explain the important technical details to the audience well. He's either dumbing it down on purpose because he thinks his audience will be easily confused, or he really has a meager understanding himself. Regardless, I don't think he's doing his audience a service when he puts this 'Hackerz-are-l33t' theme on this article like he's submitting a screenplay to Hollywood.

He's basically like the 'Smykowski' character from Office Space; trying to justify his job ("I talk to the engineers so you don't have to!"), but in the end, he's not really doing anything.

This is an important topic and it deserves to be treated much more seriously. I feel embarrassed for Rolling Stone here. It's style over content and the fancy animations are just compensating for an otherwise shallow article.

Is there a printable, text-only version? The animation is distracting and my CPU fan is spinning because of it.

Couldn't read, the format sucks.

Sites are more worried about "wowing" than making the content readable nowadays. There's a pressure from advertising, and the novelty factor gets them a lot of exposition, mentions and pageviews, but that comes at the expense of bounce rate.

Tattoos, hackers, "cyber warfare"...it's all the sensational stuff that I've grown to expect in the news. While yes, offensive cyber operations/effects stuff is the new military hotness, what about the real geeks on the front lines? Where are the profiles of radio operators or network/system administrators who are actually physically present on the front lines? Where are the profiles of 22 year old Marines who are experts in RF propagation, field expedient antennas, and satellite link budgeting in austere environments while engaging in combat operations? What about their counterparts who operate and defend enterprise scale, secure data network enclaves supporting 10,000+ users who demand real-time information to command and control forces in battle?

It's not as sexy, but those are the real geeks on the front lines. They work in grueling environments, far away from their families and deserve to be recognized in their fields.

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/91656/radio-operator-vital-pers...

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/79421/data-marines-wire-battali...

Like others, I was having trouble focusing on the text of the article. ViewText.org is down and I don't have any browser plugins for increasing readability, so this made it a bit better for me:

http://google.com/gwt/x?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%...

I like how the "heart of America's cyberdefense" or whatever they called this 'NCCIC' looks like it runs Windows 2000... (yeah, yeah, probably just a theme, but still, it's kind of funny. I have a hard time taking such things seriously once I see they aren't using a *nix.)

Now, that is awesome JS work.

tl;dr -- the article is lightweight technically but touches on important and potentially flawed aspects of the government's relation to IT security industry.

Formatting aside, the content is relatively important in a non-technical way. It is detailing the manner in which the USG is experiencing some brain drain due to both its policies and image. I wish the author had contextualized the Miami conference a bit better (and the Fedora comment is hardly forgivable, I hear Windows 8 is used in China too). There really is a need for some US cyber policy but I fear that in its current incarnation that the government is not well suited to bring on the kind of infosec talent that it needs. Yes there may have been excesses (I think I saw one or two Snowden articles on HN) but there are real attacks going on against both USG networks and those of prominent US companies. With all the people on here who are US based entrepreneurs (aspiring or succeeding) I think we want some level of government protection against foreign government attacks, in the same manner as brick and mortar businesses don't want tanks rolling through their walls.

I just hope that the US as a country consisting of both public and private sector can reach a point where petty (rather outdated) regs don't prevent willing top talent from helping the government while simultaneously ensuring that US tech companies don't fall into being simple fronts for USG collection.

This is text with a few hyperlinks. It is exactly what HTML and the web were originally intended for. Why can't people just put some damned text at a URL? I'm too annoyed by the fact that I have to interact with this godawful, pointless JavaScript nonsense to actually read this article. There's a time and a place and this is not it.

Good job by Mr. Motto. I especially liked the scroll to read intro. Most of the comments on RS about the layout seem positive.