Skip to content

Comment on A 12TB Steam “teraleak” spills more than a decade of lost PC gaming history

Comments

Tangential, but it's interesting to me that there are "Valve watchers", people who are big on social media for doing Valve analysis and kremlinology. Humans are so cool.

Sorry what's the link between valve and kremlin?

kremlinology is the term for any political intelligence gathering that's all second-order. In the canonical case of the Kremlin it's because it was very difficult to get inside data and even then there were so many moving parts that you needed an expert in just that area who had alot of data like who was having drinks with whom to predict who might be on the out and who might be ascendant.

There was one analyst reading Pravda who noticed a lot of people were suddenly being promoted into positions held by members of a certain large clique, with no notice about what was happening to the former appointees.

After one of the nuclear treaties was signed, there was a guy whose photo was published in Pravda, shaking hands with Gorbachev; a different fresh photo of him shaking hands with Gorbachev every day for an entire month. He turned out to be the head of the ministry of strategic deception.

In the canonical case of the Kremlin it's because it was very difficult to get inside data

not anymore, apparently. even random ~~grifters~~ geopolitics experts on youtube now have people on the inside.

we mostly live in misinformation age

don't get fooled that only one side does that

kremlinology is an old pre-1989 term for people trying to observe and interpret the workings of a tightly sealed institution. Could be used for Vatican rumors and news, too, for example, or North Korea, etc.

Pentagon pizza tracker?

Similar to that idea of trying to derive stuff from an indirect channel, but much more distant. (There is an obvious link between food consumption and building occupancy.)

Stuff like watching the order of names on public lists of attendees for dinner events, etc. If someone disappeared or moved off the top few names, perhaps they're in trouble or have been purged from the party ... or maybe they're just sick this week.

I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

hey, no threats, please

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.