>Your comments start with "I noticed a lot of people" and continues talking about the individuals.

Fair, but as I've now stated several times, that's not what I intend, so your continuing to read it that way is your choice.

>it seems like saying a blanket ban is justified.

How could an easily circumventable ban be what I am advocating for? That's absurd. I'm saying a ban would be pointless because if the goal is to keep them off the internet, it won't. In stating this I make no statement about the validity of an attempted ban in the first place. To be clear, I do not agree with banning people or countries from the Internet.

>Or where you wondered why Hacker Rank let them use their platform at all.

Yep! That's pretty much it. I know that Github, for example, has been made to limit access to Github where sanctioned. I thought that maybe such a thing would apply to other SaaS companies. I am not at all surprised they are on there, most startups aren't wrapped up in government level regulations. Github didn't seem to have a lot of trouble with this until Microsoft acquired them, as an example.

What surprised me maybe a little was that the profiles (I'm avoiding saying individual now) I found were very blatant so I doubt would have flown too far under the radar to anyone looking (government authorities) and would potentially have caused them to talk w/ Hacker Rank, given the nature of the site. Yes, it's basically a recruiting agency, but it's also a place to practice red team skills. This kind of information is available in MANY places, so I'm not even implicating Hacker Rank as being an accomplice in any way, just sincerely curious about how some North Korean hackers ended up on a US hacking site :)

>you assume that everyone using a computer in North Korea must be using it for hacking.

I mean, maybe? I'm not equipped to make that assertion. I think the profiles I saw were an indication that those profiles existed to practice hacking on behalf of the North Korean government. I don't think that's particularly controversial. I saved the names on the profiles I came across somewhere, and if they're reading this and feel wronged because that's not why they used Hacker Rank I'll buy them dinner if they reach out to me.

I do believe that computers and internet access are limited in North Korea, and that makes them a valuable commodity, one controlled by the North Korean government, and I expect them to use those resources in an economically viable way, so it is my intuition that running large scale red team trainings would be a great thing for them to be doing.

>They have plenty of use for the training outside of criminal hacking, and you saying it's a "workaround" for them to access educational resources ignores this.

I didn't know there was an educational exemption, and I very much appreciate your pointing it out to me. I used the word workaround because I still believe these profiles were created on behalf of work for the government of North Korea. This is a reasonable assumption, and you've provided no counter examples as to what kind of non-government run hacker culture exists in North Korea, if there is one, it must be fascinating and I'd love to learn more about it from you.

>They have plenty of use for the training outside of criminal hacking

Absolutely, these hackers are likely learning a defensive skill as well, and even if acting on behalf of the government of North Korea, I don't claim they don't deserve to develop these skills, never have.

>I hate how people treat North Koreans as either mindless tools of the state or pitiable oppressed masses. None of your comments have acted like any of the people signing up are real humans expressing complex desires in their admittedly somewhat shitty situation. Imagine how you would feel to wake up suddenly blocked from the service because they decided they don't like where you're from.

Thank you, this is much appreciated context. I apologize that the way I spoke diminished the individuals involved, that's clearly a theme here, but I think you should ask more questions before jumping into the many assumptions you've made, we could have had a lot more productive and interesting conversation if you stated your last paragraph in any of my other responses!

Thanks again for responding, and I'll keep this in my pocket when thinking and speaking of marginalized and oppressed people in the future.