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Is it legal and possible for the NSA to socially attack someone with mental health issues this way?

I'd like to rule-out some state actors by the mere heartbreaking act of socially engineering and targeting a person in pain.

Not even considering the original maintainer may be a US citizen (idk).


You do realize that plenty of state actors have no qualms with physically torturing and killing people in the most gruesome ways possible, right? Online bullying is peanuts in that context.


I asked ChatGPT 4 based on Jia's Github avatar image:

The timezones that ChatGPT thinks the avatar comes from aligns with +2 and +3, see what how it ranked and at the end the description of Jia's avatar:

---

Rank, Score, Country, City, Timezone, Criteria

1, 10, Saudi Arabia, Mecca, AST (UTC+3), Heartland of Islam, deeply rooted calligraphic traditions.

2, 9.5, Iran, Tehran, IRST (UTC+3:30), Integral Persian calligraphy with a distinct style and history.

3, 9, Turkey, Istanbul, TRT (UTC+3), Historical significance of Ottoman calligraphy, actively preserved.

4, 8.5, Egypt, Cairo, EET (UTC+2), Home to Al-Azhar University, with calligraphy in the curriculum.

5, 8, Morocco, Marrakech, WET (UTC+0), Calligraphy integrated into architecture and crafts.

6, 7.5, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, GST (UTC+4), Promotes Islamic arts through festivals and museums.

7, 7, Syria, Damascus, EET (UTC+2), Historical center of Arabic calligraphy, despite recent conflicts.

8, 6.5, Pakistan, Islamabad, PKT (UTC+5), Rich tradition, hosts several institutions and events dedicated to calligraphy.

9, 6, Indonesia, Jakarta, WIB (UTC+7), Largest Muslim-majority country with calligraphy in art and monuments.

10, 5.5, Spain, Cordoba, CET (UTC+1), Legacy of Islamic culture and appreciation for calligraphy, particularly in Andalusia.

--

GPT4: This image appears to be a stylized representation of the letter 'J' within an intricate border, possibly inspired by the art style of Islamic calligraphy. The ornate background is typical of arabesque patterns, which are characteristic of Islamic art and consist of repeating geometric forms that often echo the shapes of plants, flowers, and sometimes calligraphic writing. The letter 'J' stands out in a vibrant yellow, contrasting with the dark green of the surrounding design.


Interesting :). However, I think that EET is the only time zone that works. (This is mostly because is seems that the area follows DST, which most non western countries in the worlf do not).


1 week ago "Hans Jansen" user "hjansen" was created in debian and opened 8 PRs including the upgrade to 5.6.1 to xz-utils

From https://salsa.debian.org/users/hjansen/activity

Author: Hans Jansen <hansjansen162@outlook.com>

- [Debian Games / empire](https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/empire): opened merge request "!2 New upstream version 1.17" - March 17, 2024

- [Debian Games / empire](https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/empire): opened merge request "!1 Update to upstream 1.17" - March 17, 2024

- [Debian Games / libretro / libretro-core-info](https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/libretro/libretro-core-i...): opened merge request "!2 New upstream version 1.17.0" - March 17, 2024

- [Debian Games / libretro / libretro-core-info](https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/libretro/libretro-core-i...): opened merge request "!1 Update to upstream 1.17.0" - March 17, 2024

- [Debian Games / endless-sky](https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/endless-sky): opened merge request "!6 Update upstream branch to 0.10.6" - March 17, 2024

- [Debian Games / endless-sky](https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/endless-sky): opened merge request "!5 Update to upstream 0.10.6" - March 17, 2024

- [Debian / Xz Utils](https://salsa.debian.org/debian/xz-utils): opened merge request "!1 Update to upstream 5.6.1" - March 17, 2024


That looks exactly like what you'd want to see to disguise the actual request you want, a number of pointless upstream updates in things that are mostly ignored, and then the one you want.


glad I didn't merge it ...


A SourceGraph search like this shows https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+JiaT75&patte...

- Jia Tan <jiat75@gmail.com>

- jiat75 <jiat0218@gmail.com>

``` amap = generate_author_map("xz")

        test_author = amap.get_author_by_name("Jia Cheong Tan")

        self.assertEqual(
            test_author.names, {"Jia Cheong Tan", "Jia Tan", "jiat75"}

        )

        self.assertEqual(

            test_author.mail_addresses,

            {"jiat0218@gmail.com", "jiat75@gmail.com"}

        )
```


I tried to understand the significance of this (parent maybe implied that they reused a completely fictitious identity generated by some test code), and I think this is benign.

That project just includes some metadata about a bunch of sample projects, and it links directly to a mirror of the xz project itself:

https://github.com/se-sic/VaRA-Tool-Suite/blob/982bf9b9cbf64...

I assume it downloads the project, examines the git history, and the test then ensures that the correct author name and email addresses are recognized.

(that said, I haven't checked the rest of the project, so I don't know if the code from xz is then subsequently built, and or if this other project could use that in an unsafe manner)


additionally, even though the commit messages they've made are mostly plain, there may be features of their commit messages that could provide leads, such as his using what looks like a very obscure racist joke of referring to a gitignore file as a 'gitnigore'. There's barely a handful of people on the whole planet making this 'joke'.


Can you point to where you saw that racist joke?

I don't see anything at https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+author:jiat0...


first commit made in one of JiaT75's other repos https://github.com/JiaT75/STest/commits/master/


Thank you. If you wouldn't have explained the background, I totally would've thought that this is just an innocent typo.

(I still think it's like... 60% a typo? don't know)

Anyhow, other people called the CCing of JiaT75 by Lasse suspicious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39867593

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240320183846.19475-2-lasse.co...

Someone pointed out the "mental health issues" and "some other things"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868881

https://www.mail-archive.com/xz-devel@tukaani.org/msg00567.h...

Lasse is of course a Nordic name, and the whole project has a finnish name and hosting

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866902

If I wanted to go rogue and insert a backdoor in a project of mine, I'd probably create a new sockpuppet account and hand over management of the project to them. The above is worringly compatible with this hypothesis.

OTOH, JiaT75 did not reuse the existing hosting provider, but rather switched the site to github.io and uploaded there old tarballs:

https://github.com/tukaani-project/tukaani-project.github.io...

If JiaT75 is an old-timer in the project, wouldn't they have kept using the same hosting infra?

There are also some other grim possibilities: someone forced Lasse to hand over the project (violence or blackmailing? as farfetched as that sounds)... or maybe stole Lasse devices (and identity?) and now Lasse is incapacitated?

Or maybe it's just some other fellow scandinavian who pretended to be chinese and got Lasse's trust. In which case I wish Lasse all the best, and hope they'll be able to clear their name.

Is the same person sockpuppeting Hans Jansen? It's amusing (but unsurprising) that they are using both german-sounding and chinese-sounding identities.

That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Lasse genuinely trusted JiaT75, genuinely believed that the ifunc stuff was reasonable (it probably isn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39869538 ) and handed over the project to them.

And at the end of the day, the only thing linking JiaT75 to a nordic identity is a nordic racist joke which could well be a typo. People already checked the timezone of the commits, but I wonder if anyone has already checked the time-of-day of those commits... does it actually match the working hours that a person genuinely living (and sleeping) in China would follow? (of course, that's also easy to manipulate, but maybe they could've slip up)

Anyhow, I guess that security folks at Microsoft and Google (because of JiaT75 email account) are probably going to cooperate with authorities on trying to pin down the identity of JiaT75 (which might not be very useful, depending on where they live).


> does it actually match the working hours that a person genuinely living (and sleeping) in China would follow?

No, it doesn't:

https://play.clickhouse.com/play?user=play#U0VMRUNUIHRvSG91c...

The vast majority of their Github interactions are between 12.00 UTC and 18.00 UTC


It's worth mentioning Lasse is still online in the Libera chat room, idling. Nothing's been said.


From elsewhere in the comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39874621

> He came on IRC, he seemed ok. He did some cleanup of access and signed off for easter.


i think it's American trauma. outside of the Western hemisphere, sexist and racist jokes are just jokes


Pretty sure this is just a typo...


Interesting thing about this jiat75@gmail.com email is that it seems to not exist?

The google account: "Couldn't find your Google Account"

The email: "50 5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist"

But then when you try to register it says it's taken.

Was it disabled?


I'd say at this point all major tech companies, ISPs and authorities should have more enough information and disabling and freezing their accounts would be the first step.


This can happen if you delete your old gmail account. Source: I deleted a gmail account I shouldn't have years ago. It will say taken if it previously existed, and was deleted.


I don't think it is possible to see the pixels, they are the size of a red blood cell. But maybe you can see antialiasing or noise from the cameras.

Personally I can't see any pixelation. It's even better than reality. That being said passthrough cameras' resolution do suck but it's not what it's important and probably the easiest problem to solve.


sure, they're small, but some of them are closer to your eye lense than your retina. The pixels per degree are lower than any Apple product in the past 10 years


The video is about the LMS algorithm, which stands for the Least Mean Square algorithm. The algorithm is used to train adaptive neurons, specifically the Adaline neuron, which was developed by the speaker and his first doctoral student, Ted Hoff, in 1960. The Adaline neuron is manually trained using knobs and switches, and its objective is to minimize the error, which is the difference between the desired response and the actual response. The LMS algorithm updates the weight vector based on the error, with positive errors resulting in the addition of the input pattern to the weight vector, and negative errors resulting in the subtraction of the input pattern. The speaker demonstrates the use of the Adaline neuron using various input patterns and shows how the weights are adjusted to obtain the desired response. The speaker also introduces another version of the Adaline neuron, the MR Adaline, which uses electroplating to adjust the resistance of resistor elements and simulate the weights of the Adaline neuron.


In Uruguay I got (multiple times) a 3T MRI for $300 in under 24h (https://cudim.org/). Or 1.5T for free, no more than a week after the doctor asks. Anyone in the world can go there and pay for that and get it.

It's insane to belive I have a 3T MRI 2 blocks away from my home.

Now while staying in the US I just pray I don't need have health issue.


Medical tourism to Uruguay sounds fantastic to me!


Talking about "close to home" I wonder how close do you have to get for compasses to go haywire


Bipolar here. When I was diagnosed, though not in a FAANG, and asked for accommodation HR, my managers and company owners went against me and fired me. They didn't care about my diagnosis and was against the law but they preferrer to pay me off with a severance agreement and let me go than to understand what mental illness is about.

TBH I don't blame them. This shit is really hard to grasp even to my self. Therefore I only have one very good advice: fake it and never ever tell anyone about it. Not even your friends, less your coworkers.

Mental illnesses are not even understood at medical or research level. I honestly believe this can only be understood by very well trained professionals or anyone who experience the symptoms themselves or from a very close relative. It's really hard to be compassionate with this stuff.

My advice again, keep your mouth shut up, fake it and have a list of very good excuses. Say you have cancer, idk, anything will be better than going out with the mental illness. It's a path of no return and can very well kill all growth in your career as people will talk and place red flags you can't remove thereafter.

Life is way more important than our jobs. Don't try to push more than you physically can, even if you believe you can archive more (specially in mania phase).

Good luck, hope you are doing as well as you can.


Thanks for making this comment. I’ve often thought alone similar lines.

The state of mental health advocacy is shallow and hyper positive. They imagine that mentally ill people are just one mental trick or accommodation removed from being able to fit in to our new inclusive culture.

Instead, it’s more like an extremely junior employee giving a presentation to prospective applicants that has them making colorful, three dimensional “modern” resumes that I know would get tossed in the dumpster by any hiring manager at the firm.

Not to use 2020’s favorite word: but it’s like being gaslit by a person that isn’t old enough to understand what they’re saying isn’t true.

“You’re gaslighting me!”

[honest] “No I’m not!”

…lol… this is based on an example from my work. I wish I could put to words just how trendy their recommendation template was.


With a lot of people, once they know (or just believe) you have some kind of mental illness, you no longer have a personality or character, you have a collection of symptoms. That's a big part of what the stigma is. Yeah, don't mention it to anyone at work, ever. If you happen to be at work and a bottle of prozac falls out... that's for your "premature ejaculation" problem (which while awkward and embarrassing, is less detrimental than your chronic clinicial depression.) Risperdol? Nope, not for anything antipsychotic. That's for your nerve pain in your toes. Etc, etc.


I know it's illustrative but telling your job that you have cancer (if you don't) is an awful, awful idea.


During a manic phase bipolar patients also start to become compulsive liars, so it's not unrealistic.


Vyvanse 70mg. I suffer from Binge Eating disorder and it literally changed my life.


I didn’t have my diagnosis until 3 months ago. We are in all time zones with people 11 hours diff. Communication is hard for everyone and when you are in a severe depressive episode even taking a shower seems is impossible.


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