Yeah, exactly. If you read the Snowden leaks to learn the details of what some of their actual capabilities are (smuggling flawed keys into the DH exchange for most major web browsers for example), it makes this stuff look like kids in their basements fucking around.
Reddit: Trust us we’re GENIUSES bro, most popular web site in the world, we’re so smart I swear
Also Reddit: Hey can we have more money, we lost it all again. This new plan’s gonna work tho
I feel like this is kind of the amateur-hour stuff. It’s certainly dangerous, but in comparison to a lot of state-actor activities (or even committed-amateur activities), this kind of supply-chain attack is pretty blatant and easy to spot. Which doesn’t mean it’s easy to spot – I just mean would be trivial to volunteer and contribute some minimal fixes and enhancements to some open source project, and then at one point smuggle in a zero-day that will basically never be detected unless someone detects the intrusion itself and then works backwards from there with a ton of time to spend on it.
If you’ve ever looked at the obfuscated C contest it should be obvious that this kind of thing can be made completely invisible if you know what you’re doing. Some of the interactions and language features that lead to problems are basically impossible for a casual viewer to see, even if they’re paying attention, and the attack surface is massive and the amount of attention that goes into checking it for weird subtle vulnerabilities is minuscule.
What I used to do when I lived in an area with a decent number of homeless people, was offer to get them some food, if I had the time for it. I’d walk somewhere with them, say what do you want I’ll grab it for you, and come out and hand it to them. It was honestly a little bit awkward to do it without feeling like a ponce, making conversation with the person or whatnot feeling condescending, but whatever.
I would say the majority would discount the suggestion. I didn’t feel the slightest bit bad saying no you can’t have any money then. A minority would be really into the idea and clearly fucking light up at the idea of having their hands on a sandwich. Those dudes I felt like it was important that they get their sandwich.
I also knew a guy who used to be homeless, volunteered with homeless services and substance abuse programs and etc, spent a ton of time on it. He never gave money on the street. He got very bitter about the subject, he just said that it doesn’t help them. Make of that what you will, I don’t really know the ins and outs, but that’s what he said.
What kind of endorsement is that lmao
I won’t say 100%, but they’re generally pretty good. Big ones I can think of:
The first is a little bit qualified I guess. I was somewhat against replacing Biden for that reason (definitely before the debate), which was absolutely a mistake. But I think in retrospect, the way that they were able to blame Kamala Harris for Gaza and inflation and make it work was pretty spot-on to what I predicted.
The second one, people were furiously telling me how wrong I was, how impossible it would be for anyone to be worse than Biden, and in early days saying that Trump had achieved a cease-fire and it was just proof of how easy it would have been if only Biden had put some slight effort to it.