N. Korea Blames US For Internet Outage, Compares Obama to "a Monkey" 206
Reuters reports that North Korea's government has publicly blamed the U.S. for the widespread internet outages that the country has recently experienced (including today), and taken the opportunity to lambaste President Obama, as well. From the article: The National Defence Commission, the North's ruling body, chaired by state leader Kim Jong Un, said Obama was responsible for Sony's belated decision to release the action comedy "The Interview", which depicts a plot to assassinate Kim. "Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," an unnamed spokesman for the commission said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, using a term seemingly designed to cause racial offence that North Korea has used before.
More moaning and groaning for nothing. (Score:4, Funny)
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Meh, I blame LG for the whole affair.
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In all fairness, we did make Un a sitcom character on "2 Broke Girls."
Re:More moaning and groaning for nothing. (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you were just using the middle name to differentiate him from his father (like Americans do when they say "George W," In which case I'm just being a pedantic idiot.
Re:More moaning and groaning for nothing. (Score:5, Informative)
One nitpick: The hyphenation thing is a Westernism and somewhat antiquated at that. None of the Chinese I know (including my wife and her relatives) use it when writing their names in Latin characters or Hanzi. Generally they just write their given name as one word. According to Wikipedia, this is standard and you should write "Wang Xuiying" and not "Wang Xiu-Ying" [wikipedia.org] for a member of the Wang family named Xiuying when rendering his name in Latin characters.
Chinese who travel generally give their family name last when speaking to Westerners, and many if not most of those who do so often or who live abroad adopt Western given names. Sometimes this is one that resembles their Chinese given name, sometimes not.
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Never rely on Wikipedia as a primary source. In Singapore and Malaysia, where English is widely spoken as a first or second language, and the latin alphabet official for government forms etc, it is common for Chinese to write their personal name separately (one word per Chinese character), after their surname, just as it is written in Chinese. If they are Christian, they will often have a Christian name in addition to their Chinese personal name, which they write before their sur
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It's not a matter of what *I* think. Pinyin is a standard.
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You can see this done by lots of folks from lots of different countries, and it's not confined to the 'Net.
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Looks to me more like she transliterated her English name using Chinese characters. Maybe you should ask her.
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It doesn't stop at 'name endianness'. It's probably less confusing, in print at least, to use the convention of all-capping the surname [wikipedia.org] while leaving the full name in its native order. I imagine such a convention would be especially handy when trying to wrangle elaborate names carrying a whole syntax tree laden with titles, adjective phrases, and prepositional phrases, leaving the surname somewhere in the middle. Such names tend to be found in Europe and the Middle East at least.
The downside to smashing
Re:More moaning and groaning for nothing. (Score:5, Informative)
Also in South Korea, over 2/5ths of the entire population are either Kim, Lee, or Park. Surnames have a different meaning [ibtimes.com] over there than in the West.
Re:More Anti-Republican Prior Art (Score:3, Insightful)
George Bush Monkey Photos [lmgtfy.com]
Bush haters, from the days when Obama was merely organizing communities.
Chimps (and humans) are Apes, not Monkeys (Score:2)
Ooook! Don't say the M-word near the Librarian!
You're thinking of the "Bush or Chimp" website. We're not monkeys!
And as the other poster said, at least in America, calling black people "monkeys" is specifically racist; calling white people that is just a non-racial insult.
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And as the other poster said, at least in America, calling black people "monkeys" is specifically racist; calling white people that is just a non-racial insult.
If you're racist yes. But if you're not racist you'll be an equal opportunity insulter and will be stunned when someone says you're racist for calling a black person something when you weren't even thinking about his race.
You see that deer-in-the-headlights look from Republicans a lot. They insult someone for behaving the way they do and suddenly a overly-race-conscious liberal calls them "racist" and they're so surprised they don't know how to respond. There's the initial "huh, what?" then the "oh yea
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however it is a mere coincidence that monkey in one context means one thing and monkey in another means a complete other, and both are being used to describe presidents at a time.
Why did you even bother to write what you did? The contexts are obviously the same. It's meant to be a very insulting comparison. There might come a day, say in some "Planet of the Apes" future where being compared to a monkey is meant to be a compliment, but that obviously is not today.
There are far worse insults to throw at obama that aren't racist. Like how he uses robots to murder people because its more humane. Or how he is just the same in power as anyone else and he is really a hopeless president.
Let's hear some of these insults.
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The monkey thing is only racist if a white person calls a black person a "monkey".
However, this incident has North Korea comparing Obama to a monkey, so it can't be racist. Many people here in the US believe it's impossible for non-white people to be racist.
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I take offense (Score:5, Funny)
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the republican base claims prior art.
Actually, Obama has probably been called worse by members of his own party. You can't muscle your way to the presidential candidacy of a major political party, without hearing a lot of low, nasty epithets. I would love to hear what Hilliary Clinton says about him in private!
Obama is a tough guy. My guess, is that he just laughed the North Korean comment off, and said, "Is that the best they can do?!?!?"
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Obama is a tough guy.
Because being able to handle an empty insult from a bunch of idiots that nobody cares about or listens to is a solid indication of how tough you are.
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Obama is a tough guy. My guess, is that he just laughed the North Korean comment off, and said, "Is that the best they can do?!?!?"
I don't know. Obama may not care if Americans hate him. He may not care if America's friends hate him. But he sure seems to put a lot of effort into making sure America's enemy like him.
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Eh...I'd say democrats do. They were referring to the president as being a monkey long before the current president's term.
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Well, generally true. I seem to recall some things being said about Margaret Trudeau back in the 70s. (I've lived in both Canada and USA).
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The first lady has always been a target with every president. SNL and MadTV both frequently ran sketches that made Barbara Bush look dumb and/or get trash talked by other people. Though recently Michelle Obama made herself a really bad target. She was at a store when some random customer who didn't recognize her asked her if she could grab something off of the top shelf (Michelle is my height, 5'11", and I get asked that kind of thing often) and so she later made a stink about it in the media saying that it
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Are you saying that because SNL did it, it must be ok?
No, just saying that I can't recall any period where the first lady has ever been exempt from public lampooning.
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You mean like that playboy comic that showed the Bush kids running a meth lab?
Sorry but this "my party is better than yours" crap is just that: crap.
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In Canada, even the Democrats would be seen as too right-wing.
The problem with that statement is that it is so non-descriptive that it is just meaningless.
Take me for example, I'm a huge mishmash of opposing spectrum:
I'm in favor of legalizing almost anything drug related, gambling related, and sex related (including legalizing prostitution) and I'm also very much atheist. Many will describe that as being very left wing.
However I'm also very pro-second amendment, pro-capitalism, and very supportive of freedom of association (including allowing religious establishments
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Do you not remember people comparing Bush to a chimpanzee?
I remember that well. It was extremely insulting -- to chimpanzees. Chimps are highly intelligent creatures.
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They don't like my .sig because it makes reference to what I am. As I've explained to others, this is one way I'm "paying it forward" for those who went before me and made it possible. I woudn't have even thought of it except one particularly repetitive troll kept posting about it earlier this year, so I figured this is the way to show that we should not be ashamed of what they are, just as we're not ashamed of who we are.
It's also one way of "normalizing" us to others. Rather than being freaks, we're al
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You have an overinflated sense of importance.
Well, I do think it's important to open up the discussion for those who are willing to talk about it but can't for various reasons, as well as trying to explain to our critics that maybe their perception of us is a little bit off. However, I only talk about it when someone brings it up in response to my sig. If you have a better way, I'm listening.
Now, if you meant "an overinflated sense of self-importance", all I can say is "I wish." The last few years have destroyed any such delusions I may have had. Enj
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So Ted Nugent is their propagandist? (Score:5, Funny)
There are more facets to Mr. Poopypants than I imagined..
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Not? Does he explode when he turns 40?
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Oh! Now his whole build makes sense. He's not fat. He's just full of shit.
Didn't they announce it? (Score:2, Funny)
Didn't the US say they were going to try and get North Korea's internet access cut?
Re:Didn't they announce it? (Score:5, Funny)
Cutting North Korea's Internet access is just a trial run, the real objective is to cut Internet access to everyone in the U.S.A.
Re:Didn't they announce it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cutting North Korea's Internet access is just a trial run, the real objective is to cut Internet access to everyone in the U.S.A.
Isn't Comcast already doing exactly that?
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Cutting North Korea's Internet access is just a trial run, the real objective is to cut Internet access to everyone in the U.S.A.
Well, they just need to go ahead with the Comcast/Times-Warner merger.
One net to rule them all, one DNS to find them, one link to bring them all and into dark ports bind them in the land of dollars where the politicians lie.
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Trial run? Every single person on the USA is cut off from the glorious North Korean Kimternet. Mission accomplished.
Re:Didn't they announce it? (Score:4, Funny)
Didn't the US say they were going to try and get North Korea's internet access cut?
It was suggested by "security researchers".
Sadly, it took more candy than they had on hand to bribe the 12 year old in Des Moines, Iowa to stage the BGP attack against the 4 routers necessary to take North Korea of the Internet, so it was several days until the attack went forward.
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Prediction: (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the same slashdotters who accept "experts" who claim NK didn't hack Sony will readily accept as truth that it was "obviously" the US that attacked NK, even though there is even less objective proof of that, and could just as easily be some Anonymous offshoot, or any number of other organizations, or even North Korea itself.
See the logical disconnect, here?
For those now jumping on the "North Korea didn't hack Sony" bandwagon that some security "experts" are leading for their own political or ideological reasons, including using rationales as puzzling and pedestrian as source IP addresses of the attacks being elsewhere, some comments:
Attribution in cyber is hard [lawfareblog.com], and the general public is never going to know the classified intelligence that went into making an attribution determination, and experts -- actual and self-appointed -- will make claims about what they think occurred.
With cyber, you could have nation-states, terrorists organizations, or even activist hacking groups attacking other nation-states, companies, or organizations, for any number of motives, and making it appear, from a social and technical standpoint, that the attack originated from and/or was ordered by another entity entirely.
That's a HUGE problem, but there are ways to mitigate it. A Sony "insider" may indeed -- wittingly or unwittingly -- have been key in pulling off this hack. That doesn't mean that DPRK wasn't involved. I am not making a formal statement one way or the other; just saying that the public won't be privy to the specific attribution rationale.
Also, any offensive cyber action that isn't totally worthless is going to attempt to mask or completely divert attention from its true origins (unless part of the strategic intent is to make it clear who did it), or at a minimum maintain some semblance of deniability.
At some point you have to apply Occam's razor and ask who benefits.
And for those riding the kooky "This is all a big marketing scam by Sony" train:
So, you're saying that Sony leaked thousands of extremely embarrassing and in some cases damaging internal documents and emails that will probably result in the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment being ousted, including private and statutorily-protected personal health information of employees, and issued terroristic messages threatening 9/11-style attacks at US movie theaters, committing dozens to hundreds of federal felonies, while derailing any hopes for a mass release and instead having it end up on YouTube for rental, all to promote one of hundreds of second-rate movies?
Yeah...no.
Re:Prediction: (Score:5, Interesting)
The reporting on the hacking seems to be missing something... what hole did they use, or was this just a password leak? What were the other movies (We know about "The Interview"...) that were affected by this hack?
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My guess is that they exploited the sony root kits that was on the servers from an IT guy wanting to listen to some tunes while grepping logs.
Re:Prediction: (Score:5, Interesting)
At some point you have to apply Occam's razor and ask who benefits.
At some point... Yeah, the very first thing to ask would be that.
So, you're saying that Sony leaked thousands of extremely embarrassing and in some cases damaging internal documents...
Or anybody shorting the stock... It took a dip for a while and is now rebounding.
Please, people, get the silly politics out of your heads. This is strictly business. Could be some soap opera between Sony, Samsung, and LG, who knows, who cares, aside from the drama and intrigue for somebody's next movie.
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Just because it's "strictly business" doesn't mean that North Korea wasn't involved. They probably know how to short stocks too.
The broken english used in the threats is a match to a google translation from gramatically correct Russian. [valuewalk.com] That doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Since the Russians hacked the NASDAQ [thehackernews.com] as recently as July 2014, maybe they had something to do with it. And Russians are known to enjoy manipulating stocks [google.com]
Mind you, I don't think this has anything to do with manuipulating stocks. I think it is far more likely that it was some person who didn't like Sony very much and the deflection onto the DPRK was j
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That's not Occam's razor, that's "Cui Bono?". Occam's razor says to not multiply entities excessively. But the problem isn't multiplying entities here, it's that there are already too many visible entities to reach a single conclusion. We know that the US govt. exists, that Sony exists, that lots of hacker collectives exist, that...etc. We don't know which are significant. We *do* know that all of the above are quite willing to lie when it suits their interests.
Pick a collection of known facts and make
Re:Prediction: (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite right. In summary: none of us here in the peanut gallery have any real way to know who did what. Most of the opinions I've seen here seem to reflect whatever biases each opiner may have. The known facts are few and far between. Of course, I have my own opinions but I won't share them because they reflect my own biases.
This thing is a bit like an Agatha Christie mystery. You may be certain who did it, but you don't really know until Christie tells you. Then you invariably find out you were wrong. Even the strategy of picking the least likely culprit doesn't work. Unfortunately, in this case, we don't have the author to tell us the "truth", so we likely will never know.
Re:Prediction: (Score:5, Insightful)
You should save that comment. I think you could use it in at least 80% of stories and be bang on-topic.
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Is that all that classified evidence that Iraq was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction? The US Government is going to have to earn that kind of trust before they can be believed in anything.
Re:Prediction: (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, you say, "North Korea didn't hack Sony," as if it is an indisputable, known fact. It is not -- by any stretch of the imagination.
The fact is, it cannot be proven either way in a public forum, or without having independent access to evidence which proves -- from a social, not technical, standpoint -- how the attack originated. Since neither of those are possible, the MOST that can be accurate stated is that no one, in a public context, can definitively demonstrate for certain who hacked Sony.
Blameless in your scenario is the only entity actually responsible, which is that entity that attacked Sony in the first place.
Whether that is the DPRK, someone directed by the DPRK, someone else entirely, or a combination of the above, your larger point appears to be that somehow the US is to blame for a US subsidiary of a Japanese corporation getting hacked -- or perhaps simply for existing.
As a bonus, you could blame Sony for saying its security controls weren't strong enough, while still reserving enough blame for the US as the only "jackass".
Bravo.
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The problem is no one trusts the US anymore, they've been lying this whole time (NSA). The actions and media currently do not add up for it to be North Korea. For starters, what exactly would North Korea benefit? They had already publicly said that it was insulting, and there is no way they could prevent the movie from getting out.
Possible people that could benefit:
- The makers of the movie (or maybe Sony screwed them)
- "Anonymous", as in online activists that are pro net neutrality. The terrorist threat ba
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Welcome to Slashdot!
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The governments lie, the media lie. That's normal. That's the same in dictatorships and democracies.
The difference is that in a functioning democracy, they tell different lies.
They have a good point (Score:2, Insightful)
the US & Obama was quick to blame NK, when it was very unlikely they did it, and security experts are pointing out left & right.
Because Obama saying NK did it and we would retaliate, and suddenly NK internet goes down, fuck ya, we are guilty as fuck.
We wrongfully blamed the NK, got people to believe our lies and then DDos or whatever happened to NK's internet. All on our heads.
Our government owes NK a big ass apology and honestly, our government, from the congress critters up to the president, inc
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Not going to reply to anonymous cowards. If you got the balls to challenge what I say, then log in and let your opinion be heard.
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How do North Koreans get mod points, anyway?
Re:They have a good point (Score:4, Funny)
They buy them on Tor with Bitcoins . . . just like everybody else.
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I'm with ya up until apologizing to NK.. Their leader is a really awful person, and even this isn't worthy of an apology for the most part - this is a drop in the bucket compared to how he runs his country and treats North Koreans. I agree there ought to be an apology tho: to the rest of the world for whipping this into such a ridiculous frenzy.
Not to mention all the stuff he and his government have done to us and our allies.
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Given all that NK has done to us and our allies over the years, I don't th
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"Where is the greatness of America anymore?" -- you asked, here's one answer -- New Horizons, NASA space probe, launched 19 January 2006. Due to fly by Pluto on 14 July 2015. After that, headed to interstellar space, following the other four American space probes leaving the solar system; there are no others. American made, American operated, American funded. (with nods to the other fine nations who are operating interplanetary exploration programs)
Ape (Score:3)
Oooooook!
A monkey? (Score:4, Funny)
I Don't Think It Was Us (Score:2)
We're all a bunch of monkeys (Score:2)
So, does this mean ... (Score:2)
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Yep, until more hacked releases of Sony Pictures movies show up, this starts to smell like a publicity stunt.
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Yep, until more hacked releases of Sony Pictures movies show up, this starts to smell like a publicity stunt.
I'm not sure that is how it started, but it sure got that way way pretty quick.
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Will they be prosecuted? Perhaps they got indemnity first.
The story I build around this has the Sony episode as a bit part in something centered around South Korea's nuclear piles. And Obama *was* talking to some diplomats from China right before this started, and China is N.Korea's Internet supplier.
I *know* that my version is just a story. But I also realize that that's all everyone's version is, except those with inside information. Most of the latter aren't talking, and the ones that are have a repu
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He's a politician. What the hell did you expect?
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So is Obama your first exposure to a politician?
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Does parsing words so people will come to the wrong conclusions count as lying?
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If you do it on purpose, yes.
I do not presume that all lies are reprehensible. But intentionally misleading someone is a lie. Some times, however, staying silent isn't a real option, and speaking honestly would be injurious (to someone, perhaps yourself).
OTOH, false and defamatory statements *are* always reprehensible, even if the entity you are commenting about is excessively vile. And true statements can never be defamatory, except to a lawyer or a judge.
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Scum I can see, but human?
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Are you just intentional dense? Using monkey as a slur against blacks is centuries and centuries old.
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Is it centuries old in North Korea?
I'm not really sure why the PC police even care about this. Did they not have a reason to dislike the North Korean government until the government used a term that these people have decided is offensive?
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Are you just intentional dense? Using monkey as a slur against blacks is centuries and centuries old.
This reminds me of a story from over 30 years ago when I was a kid growing up in New Jersey. One of the mall Santas got fired because he called a kid "a little monkey". Well, he called lot's of kids that, but it wasn't really an issue until he called a black kid that. Poor old Santa. He needs to realize that you can't just go around turning a blind eye to race and color and treating everyone the same. Being impartial is racist.
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Btw bonus irony points for saying 'famous dude' instead of a name or title =P
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Also, most of us, including Obama, don't live in a forest or jungle.
That said, I mainly consider the statement defamatory to monkeys. People are the ones who are loose with words.
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You need a flash player to view this site.
What are you blathering on about?
Re:He called a black man a monkey? (Score:4, Informative)
We are all essentially monkeys... blacks,white's, eskimo's and north koreans
Maybe you are; most of us are apes.
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why? (Score:2)
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If I had mod points, I'd rate that funny, even though it cannot be proven false.
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And my hypothesis is the China did it as a favor to the US. But I can't prove it. And neither can you.
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NK has a single /24 allocation.