Even with a tool, people will still have to understand the output, enough that they can spot situations like "this part doesn't make sense at all", "that bit isn't static", "holy crud, there's an unsecured secret", "this part suggests a dependency on this other server we didn't know was involved, and which the tool doesn't investigate".

It does an okay job at this sort of thing, but definitely human eyes are needed :)

I don't know whether I would've identified the person. As a principal-ish engineer and early startup person, who interacts with teams and all up and down the org charts of companies, it's important that people trust me. One part of that is to show discretion when entrusted with information. It's nuanced.

I have some WTF quotes and situations from recent interviews that I've decided not to share. The most recent one I did share was relatively mild, and I decided to paraphrase what the out-of-line person said, and be reasonably confident the person couldn't be identified. The incubator mentioned is harder to obscure, and is relevant to some people, so I tried to find a reasonable balance, but they should know who they are and be able to take some criticism, so I didn't worry much about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46415495

"George Lucas in Love" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ49Smi2SLQ

Once PS3 was cracked enough to run game mods, every PS3 GTA freeroam session was overrun with obnoxious cheaters, ruining it for everyone else. (Sorta like the tech industry.)

In most computer tech things, I'm all Linux, OpenWrt, Coreboot, GrapheneOS, etc., but the game console is one thing that that I like being locked down.

I simply sell my game consoles when I'm done with them.

They would make terrible Linux routers, even if they were unlocked.

Shouldn't I be allowed to repurpose it for other uses than just a console when it becomes EOL?

Yes, once hardware becomes some kind of end-of-use, end-of-support, or end-of-life (exactly what, to-be-determined), the brand should be required to unlock any aspect that hasn't already been unlocked, so that people can reuse the hardware. (And maybe put the unlocks in escrow before then, in case the brand goes out of business.)

There are also situations in which hardware should be unlocked while within use and support. But probably not for a given gaming device, or not in a way that permits that hardware be used as the gaming device while unlocked.

Gaming consoles are a very rare thing that I want locked down, as long as I am sharing whatever pool of online gamers that device accesses. (Because online gaming has way too many people who haven't yet learned to play well with others, and cheating in multiplayer games is a thing that many do.)

And the fact that I have less control and ownership of a gaming device is one of the reasons why I use a dedicated device for gaming, and also isolate it on the guest VLAN.

As someone who really tries hard to fight the environmental waste (I litter pick, I donate, I reuse, I repurpose) it hurts to see to walk by a second hand tech store with stacks of old consoles in the window (excluding retro here) knowing they will just end up in a landfilled polluting the world for the rest of entirety and cannot be used for anything more than a paper weight. This isn't just gaming consoles.

My view is that cheating is a developer/studio problem not hardware. If game companies actually enlisted proper moderation this wouldn't be an issue. Where can I report cheaters, How do I report cheaters? That was never a provided option to me. Although maybe now you can, I don't game online as much as I did, but even when you could, not one thing was done about it.

I kicked hackers back in the day in my CS:S servers. If they actually hired moderators who actually did their job then this wouldn't be so much of a problem.

I don't disagree. Knowing that the device is locked down I cannot ensure that I am not being used for monetary gain.

Isolating to a VLAN should be the de-facto but most outside of tech have no idea what that is, so now you have a corporate brickable console prone to monitoring all for the sake of mitigation of hacking and to force you to upgrade for cash grabs.

Yes, realistically Nintendo and Sony do somewhat provide a service where you can still play a PS3, as that of a PS2. They want folk to use their consoles but knowing they could just axe it like so, deters me from buying.

Unless the publisher has already written off a book, don't they have incentive to market it?

There are some low-cost things you can do to market a book, and they reportedly make the difference between no sales, and some or many sales.

And a publisher can learn the currently effective marketing methods, and then apply that skill across books of many authors.

But it costs almost nothing to do ARC readers for reviews and ratings, and it's free to time things for the Kindle store algorithm. You just have to know to do it, when.

And there's some other "free" marketing that publishers should have automated by now, because they can amortize that across many book releases.

You know that book/movie, "The Firm", in which the new law school graduate gets a surprisingly lucrative job offer? (spoilers) It turns out that the reason is Crime.

"Big law" firms are a good example of this too: they pay way more than some random family law practice.

But some companies have the choice of hiring, for example, one really great engineer for $500k, and one very solid one for $250k.

Another organization might want to hire three engineers for $250k.

A third, perhaps, wants to hire seven at $100k.

They're all spending the same amount of money, but not every company can "afford" that spend -- especially if they need several engineers working on unique feature sets.

I just think it's a leap to say that every company paying more than average market value is criminal.

What types of clients might those be?

But the context of the conversation is white collar crime, corruption, or unfair practices, and paying significantly above market rate.

Costco is a very egalitarian organization. They pay is flatter across the entire hierarchy. Lower rank people are paid more, higher ranked people are paid less. They are a super ethical organization, I'm a big fan (though they could do better at incentivizing innovation).

It's just not the same pattern as paying gigantic amounts of money to hoard up "CS grads" or lawyers.

At some point does complacency with scammers become racketeering or criminals conspiracy? Knowledge is an element of crime and they know people are being scammed yet look away from it.

To quote Randall Munroe, "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."

https://xkcd.com/552/

  Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
  Zuckerberg: Just ask
  Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
  [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
  Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
  Zuckerberg: I don't know why.
  Zuckerberg: They "trust me"
  Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks

Though, sometimes the exact reason is muddied, since companies that are perceived as unethical in how they behave externally are often also perceived as unethical in how they behave towards employees. So you might object on pragmatic grounds of how you'd be treated, before you ever get to, say, altruistic grounds.

Also, sometimes fashion is involved. For example, many people wouldn't work for company X, because of popular ethical objections to what they do being in the news, but some of those people would probably work for an unknown company doing the same things, without thinking much about it.

But often it's just "I don't like what company Y is doing to people, and I wouldn't work on that, even if they treated employees really well, and it was really fashionable to work there".

(See, for example, the people who refused to work for Google after the end of Don't Be Evil honeymoon phase, even though they generally treated employees pretty well, and it was still fashionable to work there.)

You might want to include an "Edit:" when substantially changing or replacing a comment.

Some of the more niche/hobby transceivers could be used by a group of bad actors at an event, for comms that are less-monitorable than smartphones and mainstream COTS handheld transceivers.

And such hobby transceivers/transmitters might not operate on the list of RF bands that would be jammed by authorities when there's a suspected terrorist situation.

Many of these devices have exposed PCBs (either general-purpose SBCs, or specialized). So, saying "no Raspberry Pi" could be an attempt to ban all exposed PCB devices. And "no Flipper Zero" is the non-exposed-PCB problematic device that everyone has also heard of.

Kudos to the people keeping the event safe, especially given all the recently emboldened bad actors right now, who might be attracted to the event.

For hobbyists, there are numerous opportunities to advocate for your right to, e.g., carry electronics hobbyist gadgets, or to wear an artistic blinking LED jewelry piece strapped to your chest. Some of those opportunities need help, while some other opportunities could be counterproductive to your cause.