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marginalia_nu · 3 months ago
I don't know what sort of MKUltra-esque psyop is going on with the font rendering on this website, but it is exceptionally trippy[1].

[1] https://imgur.com/fpruTB9

LargoLasskhyfv · 3 months ago
They are trying to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) you :-)

j/k. For me that occurs only when I zoom the site on FF under Linux, but not when I leave it at normal scaling, and use the 3 letters on the upper right side to change the font size instead.

ManualEntry · 3 months ago
BLIT is interesting, but I wonder if precedence already exists in photosensitive epilepsy and sending flicker/stroboscope videos/gifs. Of course with a lot of caveats (rarely deadly, affects few), but the idea seems similar to me.

Apparently it is illegal in the UK to do that and I'd guess it is illegal in most countries. https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/news/sending-triggering-images-o...

edit: Didn't find a case, but it is illegal in the UK at least.

airstrike · 3 months ago
Oh, that looks like the original Snow Crash. Time to read it.
zibw · 3 months ago
I run into this on some other websites, I think it's just a font and Linux issue.
twic · 3 months ago
Looks ok to me in Firefox on Fedora 42: https://imgur.com/a/7IQ5hwJ

EDIT Oh, it does look busted in Chrome, though. But you can just not use Chrome.

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bangaladore · 3 months ago
It's terrible with Edge on Windows, not vertically misaligned terrible, but terrible, nonetheless.
Terr_ · 3 months ago
Perhaps it's a way to encode user and time-of-access into the document, so that even scanned leaks can be traced back to a person. :p
Xiol32 · 3 months ago
I have been having this exact same issue across multiple websites recently, most of the time it's monospace fonts that have the issue - Github is a nightmare. It only started after I upgraded to Fedora 42.

Haven't got to the bottom of it yet. I set Victor Mono as my Monospace font in Chrome and that has fixed it for things like the HN comment box, for instance, but Github and such still all look weird.

marginalia_nu · 3 months ago
I've can't remember ever seeing this particular glitch before in my 20+ year Linux usage history. Very weird.
wlkr · 3 months ago
It's not quite as pronounced for me, but it still seems to be a bit off. The CSS suggests that the intended font is GT America Extended.

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The28thDuck · 3 months ago
This actually messed with my head. I now see the comments misaligned on HN.
diabllicseagull · 3 months ago
fine on firefox and safari under macos

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carlcortright · 3 months ago
this made me laugh out loud
sunscream89 · 3 months ago
Hey, go grab those Gateway files, I’m sure they have copies at the desk!

Gateway II is disappointing and the hidden plot line is that these experiences are curated by superior handlers and these are the accounts as ordinary man would interpret them.

Btw, were you being satirical? They won.

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hoistbypetard · 3 months ago
It's interesting that they chose to redact some of the markings on the document. (e.g. you see "SECRET" and below that there's a redacted mark.)
psunavy03 · 3 months ago
That generally means that while the document was declassified, parts of it weren't, and the still-classified info obviously gets redacted.

Information generally gets declassified after 25 years, but there are exceptions for when arbitrarily declassifying things could jeopardize capabilities that are still in use, burn intelligence sources who are still alive, etc.

ricksunny · 3 months ago
Like the fact that up to 50% of the State Department was actually CIA, as noted by Arthur Schlesinger Jr and only declassified this year, 63 years later, as part of the recent trove of JFK files releases.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/2025-03-19/cia-cover...

(Even this much was the result of decades of sustained political support for disclosure since Oliver Stone’s landmark 1991 film.)

Key takeaway is that if the unaccountable minders thumping national security don’t want something released - ever - it won’t be releases.

hoistbypetard · 3 months ago
That makes sense. I just found it interesting that the markings were considered something that could fall into that category. I thought those were usually so broad (e.g. NOFORN) that they wouldn't be.
kevin_thibedeau · 3 months ago
There is an Obama EO that now encourages using ten years for less sensitive material as part of an effort to let in more sunshine. The new procedures also require the declassification date to be determined upon creation so that it isn't left to a non-SME 25 years later.
nonameiguess · 3 months ago
Portion markings in the IC, at least in the modern era, will include both the classification and a compartment. The compartment is specific to the collection method, i.e. SI indicates signals intelligence, TK indicates satellite data. Since those can reveal the source of the data, that reveals capabilities that the agency may not want to reveal, even if the data itself is no longer sensitive enough to classify.
MrMorden · 3 months ago
Compartments are just for SCI. IC agencies do like putting all the classification markings on cafeteria menus, but they do non-SCI as well.

Both SAPs and SCI control systems can be unacknowledged/unpublished, and foreign releasability markings can easily be classified because they show that the country in question has an intelligence relationship with the US that covers a specific topic.

mschuster91 · 3 months ago
> Since those can reveal the source of the data, that reveals capabilities that the agency may not want to reveal, even if the data itself is no longer sensitive enough to classify.

Always 'member Trump and his release of a high resolution photograph from a satellite [1]. It took mere hours for people to work out which exact satellite was used to create the photograph and established a lower bound on its imaging capabilities.

[1] https://qz.com/1699833/what-we-can-learn-from-the-spy-satell...

carlcortright · 3 months ago
This should come with a warning on how dizzy it makes you before you read it. Nuked my afternoon of productivity
lawlessone · 3 months ago
That bird drone looks cool , very similar tail to many current drones.
kjkjadksj · 3 months ago
Makes you wonder about the current state of the art in the bird drone program.
dannyw · 3 months ago
This is probably done by their recruitment division.

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