Zironic (u/Zironic) - Readit News

Zironic commented on Games Workshop and the big ambition of a miniatures business bbc.com/news/articles/cr5... · Posted by u/defrost

Retric · 7 months ago

In that context Mattel is the kind of selling molded plastic.

Zironic · 7 months ago

To illustrate how crazy good Games Workshop are at what they do. Mattel has 10x the revenue of Games Workshop but both companies pull in the same net income.

They're both plastic companies at their core, but GW have margins that Mattel could only dream of.

Zironic commented on Games Workshop and the big ambition of a miniatures business bbc.com/news/articles/cr5... · Posted by u/defrost

Retric · 7 months ago

They aren’t really dominant unless you so heavily restrict the space. The more popular “battlefield” simulation between armies are more abstract aka Risk, Chess, etc or video games like StarCraft.

Restrict things enough to basically describe 40k and sure they’re dominant, because you’re excluding most games.

Zironic · 7 months ago

You're looking at the wrong market. Games Workshop are not a "battlefield simulation" company. They're a miniature company or if you want to look at it more broadly, they're a company selling molded plastic.

The battlefield simulation is only a means to an end of convincing consumers to buy high margin plastic.

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

steventhedev · a year ago

I can imagine the EU is far more interested in an EU flagged company doing business with Hezbollah who are a designated terrorist organization and subject to sanctions.

If there's one thing you learn quick in fintech - it's you absolutely do not fuck with sanctions.

Zironic · a year ago

If it was a real company that would be the case. However from what I've read the journalists looking into BAC Consulting has found it to be a company in name only with no actual offices or hungarian employees.

It makes me slightly curious which company Israel convinced to actually produce these pagers and radios.

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

showerst · a year ago

> This is going to create a lot of distrust in the international supply chain.

Is it? If your threat model includes Mossad (or really any nation state) then you shouldn't have trusted those devices in the first place. Even if you didn't have "tiny explosives" on your bingo card, certainly bugs (hardware or software) should've been on there.

Given that those pagers are commonly used by doctors and none of them have been reported to explode, I think we can guess that it was targeted to the batches delivered directly to Hezbollah.

Zironic · a year ago

For instance, when Apollo Gold lisenced their pagers to a little known hungarian company, having their brand used as a bomb delivery device in the middle-east was not something they would have had on their list of potential brand risks.

So now companies engaged in international business not only have to consider exposure to the usual fraud, but also if their counterpart is actively malicious.

It's also likely going to make nation states start thinking about supply chains they maybe didn't before. How do you know someone didn't put explosives in your mice, keyboards, monitors, headsets and various other things that were probably manufactured in china?

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

geysersam · a year ago

Interesting that it wasn't discovered by any bomb sniffing dog in Lebanon. They had thousands of devices. There must be at least a few bomb dogs in Lebanon right?

Zironic · a year ago

Bomb sniffing dogs can't detect every explosive compound under the sun. They're trained on some of the most common ones but there are almost infinite variations of explosive chemistries.

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

vorpalhex · a year ago

8 senior Hezbollah officers are dead. So far the only clear indication of a non-Hezbollah injury is from a Hezbollah officers daughter.

Sounds successful and well targeted.

If you don't want your electronics to explode randomly, don't attack Jews.

Zironic · a year ago

Now that the pandoras box of mass booby trapping electronic devices has been opened, who is to say we won't see tit for tat retaliations with other supply chain attacks?

Will every teddy bear now need to be scanned for explosives before entering the country?

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

gruez · a year ago

The claim isn't that they're "civilian devices", it's that they're "devices all over civilian society". That's relevant because bobby trapping them is liable to cause casualties.

Zironic · a year ago

It's like cluster bombs and landmines. You have no idea where all these things are. You have no idea how many of them exploded and which didn't and it's extremely hard to clean up the duds.

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

mrtksn · a year ago

Ha, maybe this will be the turning point for international corporations becoming national-only? Or maybe make the big brands like Apple/Samsung the only trusted device manufacturers and completely wipe out the small ones?

No iPhones exploded so far but I wouldn't be surprised if the paranoia takes over everywhere and local supply chains and local producers become a thing. "Foreign social media platforms" was already a concern but this is "foreign hardware is booby trapped as you can see". Another nail for the globalized world, united humanity, citizens of the world etc. If a big brand has a supply chain is infiltrated too, then its all over.

Also, are those people blind? Don't they see that booby trapping large number of devices rhymes with poisoning the well? It wouldn't help with antisemitism but that's another discussion.

Zironic · a year ago

Yeah, I can't say I'm a big fan of this massive scale booby trapping devices all over civilian society and I suspect most nation stats are not very happy about this either. The EU is probably not going to be happy at all about Israel using an EU flagged company to do it either.

This is going to create a lot of distrust in the international supply chain.

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

flyinglizard · a year ago

Why would civilians have in their possession tactical communication devices of a military organization?

Zironic · a year ago

Hezbollah like most other similar organisations is not a primarily military organisation even though they are a paramilitary one. The vast majority of the members of Hezbollah have non-military roles of various kinds.

Zironic commented on Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say reuters.com/world/middle-... · Posted by u/shmatt

tptacek · a year ago

I'm looking at pictures on my MidEast Twitter TL, with legit reporters RT'ing them, of palm-sized slim ICOM radios.

Zironic · a year ago

According to Routers, they were bought at the same time as the pagers 5 months ago. So I would bet on it being the same supply chain operation that targeted both devices and maybe other devices that were bought at the same time.