It’s more nuanced than that. Collaboration is often initiated by simple, “Hey, can we collaborate?” emails, and that’s how these are crafted to look. Legitimate emails of this sort may or may not have attached business proposals.

What is being exploited here is the banality of these kinds of routine business interactions, and it highlights where people have gotten lax in their own practices.

So while I agree that it’s essentially people not following the same standard security advice that’s been repeated over the last two decades, there’s an element of “business dealings are not exempt” that many of these and future entrepreneurs need to remember.

8. Do not use a personal virtual private network (VPN). Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from your internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface. Many free and commercial VPN providers have questionable security and privacy policies. However, if your organization requires a VPN client to access its data, that is a different use case.

Nice try, fed! We all know how trustworthy ISPs are. While I’m at it, why don’t I just install a backdoor for you? Maybe add a keylogger, as a treat?

Most of the advice is prescient, but this one is just stupid.

“eBPF is a revolutionary technology that allows us to modify operating system behavior in real time without risky or expensive kernel code changes. It’s had a remarkable impact on our ability to iterate quickly on everything from networking to security to containerization,” said Alexei Starovoitov, Co-creator and Maintainer of eBPF, Kernel Developer at Meta.

—Alexei Starovoitov, 2021

That one didn’t age so well.

It’s also a reference to Dan from the Game Grumps, who declared that every haiku should end with “It’s snowing on Mt. Fuji.”

It’s snowing on Mt Fuji.

I appreciate your analogy, and I recognize that the numerous Linux kernel maintainers haven’t so much as made a peep about this in the last two years—plenty of other drama, but not that.

It could be that it has flown under everyone’s radar, or it could be that it’s not anything to worry about (yet?).

I can’t personally say. Beyond my knowledge.

Why aren’t more people talking about this? It been here at-least since the last two generation of CPUs from AMD (from my research worst offender) and Intel.

Likely because of this:

Microsoft Pluton is currently available on devices with AMD Ryzen® 6000, 7000, 8000, Ryzen AI and Qualcomm Snapdragon® 8cx Gen 3 and Snapdragon X series processors. Microsoft Pluton can be enabled on devices with Pluton capable processors running Windows 11, version 22H2 and later.

Emphasis mine. It’s an optional function, and this sounds like it’s targeted to businesses who either provide or have IT services. So like TPM, you can use it or not, and given the sharp rise in ransomware and other attacks, I can see why a business might want to use it.

How bad is it? I dunno. It seems to be so “noteworthy” that nobody is talking about it, and it sounds very optional.

Also they removed the cooling fans. Maybe they have other cooling set up somewhere in the setup, but this doesn’t seem like a technique you could deploy on a system that’s under load without causing irreparable damage or potentially introducing heat-related errors.

I was lucky to get what I assume is a mutant avocado seed. I tried to grow six different seeds, germinated four, and only succeeded in actually planting one. Two didn’t germinate, and the other three grew roots but the seedling was malformed and wouldn’t grow out of the seed.

The one that survived must have had a mutation that allowed it to survive despite what was otherwise probably an intentional effort to produce sterile seeds.

Yeah, my problem with later retellings of stories like OP’s is I have no way to verify if they’ve missed the plot or some pertinent details that might point to a legitimate reason they would be arrested. “They used Signal” is hardly incriminating on its own, and OP strikes me as paranoid and not especially skeptical.

I’m happy to be wrong, but I can’t just take OP’s word that their recounting is accurate. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I do not mean to sound rude, but this reads like a paranoid conspiracy theorist’s diary entry.

There are lot of people in the privacy communities who are shaming and attacking those of us who want take take privacy seriously.

Okay, and there are a lot of people who aren’t doing those things and are either supportive or neutral on your choices. The internet is full of people with opinions. I suggest blocking the people you don’t like.

And in france it was many times in the news about a group of friends who were arrested for using Signal.

Citation needed. Your third- or fourth-hand account is so vague that I wonder if the devil has been lost along with the details.

This all leads to my suggestion. I think we need to stop the feds influence and propaganda campaigns against the privacy communities.

You haven’t demonstrated that this is happening. It probably is to some degree, but you haven’t given any kind of diagnostic evidence that anyone could use to detect a “fed” over an earnest human being with a shit opinion. How would you make that determination? What if I earnestly disagree with someone using Tor, because my foundation of information is based on a lie? Do I deserve to be banned, or should I be educated?

Ultimately, I don’t know why you care what other people think. If they think you’re some weird degenerate for using Tor and leaving your phone at home, that’s their problem. If you ask people not to use your computer, and they think you’re a degenerate because of it, that’s their problem.

By all means, take your privacy seriously and do what makes you feel safe, but that doesn’t mean there’s bad actors lurking in every shadow. Your desire for privacy should not lead you to paranoia.

Sorry, I should have clarified that what Democrats were running on in reality versus the zeitgeist weren’t the same. That’s my bad.

The problem with their actual campaign promises is they weren’t always self-evident to the average person why they were the things they’d want, which you touched on. “How does taxing billionaires deal with greedflation? I don’t smoke weed—why should I care about that? Why are my groceries so damn expensive, now‽ I remember when gas was cheap. What were the promises, again?”

Meanwhile, Trump stayed on message. He brought out the pitchforks and torches for minorities, and he promised to deal with “government weaponization” (by weaponizing the government and which has that useful quality of meaning different things for different people), he promised to fix inflation by applying tariffs to every blessed thing (which we all know is a truly unhinged plan). Most importantly, he made the headlines.

Democrats can’t play it safe the next time. They’re playing ball with a cult leader, and if they want to stand any chance at midterms, they need to realize they’re up against an adversary who is more than happy to twist and shape the rules to favor them.

multiple people in this thread understood and didn’t seem to have a problem with it, except for you

Yes. Which is why I asked a clarifying question. When you don’t know something, you ask.

so you are either troll, or not really equipped for a discussion anyway.

Says the person who refused to answer a basic, clarifying, and reasonable question. Multiple times.

of course you were. bye, sea-lion.

It must be very hard for you to see trolls and bad actors everywhere. Maybe touch grass for a while.

I would also like our politicians to be more progressive but I can understand why politicians try to be moderate.

I think in practice they need to have some moderation (because there’s a lot of different kinds of people they would govern), but that’s not how they should run their campaigns. People want change, they know things are broken, and they voted upon that vibe which gave Republicans a three branch majority. Republicans promised that giving them the reigns will provide the antidote to people’s anxieties, and since the Democrats were mainly only running on the idea of, “Vote for us, because Trump is going to be terrible,” people had the choice between “change” and “more of the same.”

People don’t realize that more of the same is the better choice in this case, but that’s the fault of Democrats for not conveying to the public why people should want that over “change” that’s definitely not going to exacerbate the wealth divide.

I wasn’t talking to them. I was talking to you, and I even further clarified my question; you still haven’t told me which question you were referring to, either.

Which leads me to believe you aren’t here to have a conversation, you’re here, because you think your quippy question was some kind of dunk, and you erroneously believe it’s self-evident what you meant.

So congratulations. You had two choices, and you chose to sniff your own farts instead of presume I was asking in good faith.

I dunno who you’re referring to. Everyone i know voted for Harris, even the anarchists, because they recognize the value of building a coalition of change from relative safety over what we are about to get.

I do think terminally online people are trying to find one single group to blame, and I agree that that’s wrong. It was a failure on multiple levels, but given the amount of capital they have, the in-built ability of both Biden and Harris to reach the people by virtue of their current jobs, and the fact that it’s Democrats’ literal job to lead and inform the public, and it begins to strain credulity to think they just lost by chance, that the planets weren’t aligned, or something.

Democrats should be held accountable for how they ran their campaign; to say they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory would be an understatement. Most people vote off of general vibes, with the last month being the most important, and people are and were scared, angry, and lost.

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over - confident, and vain.

—Spinoza

Democrats didn’t give people a reason to hope, so people went for the easy authoritarian option. Things feel broken to a lot of them, so surely, he’ll change some things and totally not exacerbate the existing causes.

If Democrats can’t guide people’s feelings, if they can’t run somebody exciting, who promises and exudes hopeful change, they’re going to continue to lose ground to Republicans who are able to stoke the fires of fear and promise sweeping (authoritarian) changes to ameliorate that fear.

I’m guessing they’ll be singing a different tune when Trump has them in court.

This is the part that honestly scares me. SCOTUS gave him broad immunity, and with the jackals he keeps in his orbit, I don’t doubt for a second he/they could contrive “creative” ways to punish anyone that speaks ill of him, resists his efforts, or otherwise tries to speak truth to power.

What about the scientists and teachers just trying to do their jobs? What about the environmental activists? What about the charities trying to help Haitians or Mexicans or Queer people? What about the legal orgs fighting to keep Christianity out of public schools? They don’t have the money to fight the government, and all are potential targets if the right lobbyists convince him it would be more profitable if he were to make them “go away.”

Bruh, are you seriously getting bent out of shape because I asked a clarifying question?

If you ask, “Which ice cream do you want?” and someone replies, “Which ice cream flavors are there?”, do you also get upset and accuse them of avoiding the question? Because that’s the same sort of scenario over which you’re casting aspersions.

If you say, “What do you propose they do?” it matters whether you are asking, “What do you propose they do in the current time up to Jan 20, 2025,” versus, “What do you propose they do in 2026/2028.”

But since you’re being so combative over an earnest question, I don’t think you really care and are just claiming I’m not answering, because you don’t actually understand what I’m asking, don’t like my critique of the Democrats, and don’t want to actually engage in a real conversation.

They’re complicit through willful ignorance. You can’t beat the drum of fascism, parade Project 2025 around and rightly point out that it’s a theofascist manifesto and blueprint, then run the campaign they ran. I wanted to vote for Kamala, and I had to pump myself up by the end. They took a gigantic wave of enthusiasm and pissed it away by playing it safe. That wasn’t Prosector Harris going against felon, rapist, fraud Trump. That was Biden’s shadow by the end, and they let Republicans tie her to Biden’s actions as president.

They weren’t trying to win; they thought, “Surely, Americans have sense and won’t vote for that guy.” Credulous fools.

To your other questions: would I be on Biden’s side in a civil war? Probably, yes. But I’m not hoping for a civil war or for Biden to do anything authoritarian—what I want is for him and the rest of the Democrats, not just the handful of firebrands, to collectively represent our pain. If they can’t say the quiet part out loud because of “decorum,” then they are failures as leaders.

And that’s why they lost. Fuck decorum. They haven’t given anyone reason to hope in a long time. People voted for Biden, because they created their own hope by voting for not-Trump, but Biden himself didn’t give the average person reason to hope, a reason to be excited for the future of the country (despite actually doing some good domestically).

Trump, on the other hand, gives his faithful reason to hope. He’ll (allegedly) crush their nebulous enemies and punish those they feel are deserving. He’ll restore some vague time when queer people “didn’t exist,” women didn’t work, and there were only two legal genders. Christianity will be used to indoctrinate children in public schools, and every busybody with spare time will get to decide what books we’re all allowed to read and which bathrooms we get to use. Like, he’s gonna make good on at least some of that, all while plundering taxpayer money before their very eyes, and they’ll let him, because he did the other things they wanted.

So yeah. I don’t expect them to start a civil war, but they are complicit by regularly and frequently failing to treat the threat Trump poses seriously, and they are squandering yet another opportunity to build their base by mirroring the pain the rest of us are feeling.

ETA: and I can only assume that’s because their privilege gives them the ability to not care that much.