Know Your Subject

I have made my share of embarrassing faux-pas, saying the wrong thing, pronouncing a word the wrong way. But when I put something in writing, I try very hard not to make silly mistakes. That includes knowing my subject well.

Here is a quote from a recent BusinessInsider article on how hackers work. In case it get taken down, it is reproduced here:

One way people make themselves vulnerable is by having a weak password. Some hacks are group-force attacks that use publicly available data to hit servers with different password possibilities. People who use obvious passwords are "basically leaving the key to their front door under the doormat," Ricotta said.

"Group-force" attacks? Is that some new methodology wherein we guess the names of your Facebook or Google groups and try them as passwords? Or perhaps we join the local book club ("group") and then beat up the user until they give us their password ("force").

I get mistakes and typos, but confusing "group-force" with "brute-force" is just sloppy work. One of the reasons I read the Wall Street Journal over the New York Times - among many others - is that the editing in the WSJ is of a much higher quality; sloppy mistakes slip through much more rarely.

If you are going to write about something, at least research it?