[_-___________-_]

Hmm.

I "obtained" 2^32 IPv4 addresses pretty easily; not sure if it's legitimate or not:

  for addr in range(2**32):
    print('.'.join([str(addr >> (i << 3) & 0xFF) for i in range(4)[::-1]]))

Edit: Well, this was unpopular. In case it's too subtle, my point is that the title is terrible.

[0x0]

Your script doesn't seem to assign any of the printed IPs to ASNs registered to you, so your joke kind of misses the mark a bit.

[_-___________-_]

I added an edit to make it more clear, but I was talking about the title.

[wut42]

There's nothing wrong with the title. Obtained means "To get hold of; to gain possession of, to procure; to acquire, in any way".

[_-___________-_]

Which is quite literally what my script does :)

Think about if the title said "800K email addresses obtained illegitimately", and what you would interpret the meaning of that to be.

[sbarre]

I know pedantry is a HN thing, but I suspect the majority of the audience here understood what "obtained" meant in this context.

This seems like a particularly weird hill for you to repeatedly die on.

[skywhopper]

I would expect a database of valid email addresses had been compromised. Context of what is being “obtained” matters, of course. But the sum total of valid IP addresses is a fixed, finite, and well-known value. Can you write a script to generate all valid email addresses?

[_-___________-_]

I can, and it does eventually complete, but it might take a while.

[NullPrefix]

A money printing machine

>printf("$100");

[wut42]

For emails, I would think they just got the address.

For IPs addresses, I would think they got an assignation as well, because IPs numbers without assignations are worthless.

It all depends on the context.

[skywhopper]

The concept of ownership of an IP address, implied by “obtains”, is pretty clear and well-understood. The story was exactly what I imagined after reading the headline. Rather than making an obtuse joke, how would you suggest it be improved?

[_-___________-_]

"obtains control of" would be much better.

consider the headline "obtained 800k email addresses illegitimately". would you really assume that this meant they were able to receive email at those addresses, or just that they'd obtained the addresses?