That seems irrelevant. The most commonly used ID document for many things in the US is a driver's license; it's issued by the states, not federal govt, so what.
Similarly you could argue that addresses and zip codes are assigned by the USPS not directly by the federal govt, so what.
Combine this with date-of-birth and phone no. and you have a very small set of sufficiently near-unique identifiers (even if that wasn't the intent of the SSN).
One big mistake was not to legislate (at any point between the 1930s and 1980s) to criminalize third parties from using the SSN as unique identifier, as is done by other countries.
Imagine if the East German Stasi had merely outsourced surveillance to data brokers and credit bureaux - different regime, same effect.
Well, that combined with the expectation that the recipient would also try that daily challenge, then presumably respond with comment/message/reshare comparing how they did.
Ok. FYI that comment got auto-deleted too, I had to vouch it to undelete it. You might need to email HN moderation after you start adding your affiliation to your posts, else they'll keep getting auto-deleted immediately.
Shocking, only 10 short years since this (when Merkel was Chancellor): Turkey asks Germany to prosecute comedian Jan Böhmermann (Germany's equivalent of John Stewart) over Erdoğan poem
The Doolittle Raiders actually flew B-25Bs 2600 miles, they didn't hitch a ride on a Japanese cargo ship, though. Spiderweb maybe more resembles the 2024 Lebanon pager attack than the Doolittle Raid.
Sure it was a huge shock to Russia but clearly was a once-off, and required undercover Ukrainian operatives to assemble the smuggled drone parts near the Ukrainian or Kazakh borders, and Russian truckers to unwittingly move containers. All of that operation was revealed and probably can not be repeated; the operatives were evacuated.
> It put the Russians on notice that they weren't safe. Not that the Russians care, but most countries would.
Well there was no GSM jamming near sensitive Russian sites but there is now, and that seems to be annoying Russian civilians intensely, along with internet blocking.
Remember in 2017 when 'Hamilton' was the hot thing, and companies emerged with dubious business models about industrial-scale scalping and reselling tickets? This is why we have (/used to have) regulators.
Also, 9/2025 Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast with Lina Khan and Zohran Mamdani to discuss how dynamic pricing and algorithmic ticket monopolies are pricing everyday fans out of experiencing "the people's game" in person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4dJsLDvwrU
You have to declare your affiliation with Spidra in your posts (are you an affiliate? marketing? employee?), to follow HN guidelines, and be neutral with criticisms. Otherwise your threads are getting killed.
If you mean Operation Spiderweb, the Ukrainian Osa drone only had a range of 5 miles/ 8km (one-way) and had to be launched from the roof of containers simultaneously transported unknowingly by Russian truckers and that was a covert operation that took 18 months to set up. So no that particular model couldn't attack even 10 miles away.
Ukraine has other long-range strike drones but haven't heard of more than a thousand miles range.