helpfulanon

Your ego is a huge problem.

I'm fascinated that you were able to interview and in a few cases get hired by companies with a massively high bar and sophisticated screening. Someone let you in the door because they saw something in you. They wanted to give you a shot, that they DO NOT give to just anyone.

This almost certainly has to be a significant problem with mental health or social skills. You're just not fitting in, so you're getting ejected over and over.

Assuming mental health is something you've accepted may be the problem, my advice is:

1) Go to therapy and invest in it. If you're prescribed meds, take the meds. If they give you goofy homework do the homework. Double down on it. (this helped me)

2) Accept that even though you have talent, these bigger companies just may not be the right fit for you. There are many small tech businesses, including development and security consulting shops and agencies (think 100 people or less) that pay well and are staffed with talented misfits. They tend to be very nurturing places that let you carve out your role and find your place. Smaller businesses have health plans etc too. Be humble and have an open mind.

My teenage nephew got a RAT malware, that someone used to record him watching porn. Then they used that to blackmail him, saying that they would report him to the FBI for watching porn as minor or something. I believe looking for crypto as a payout.

My brother (his dad) caught wind of it and had some fun messing with the attacker. But for a moment my nephew was in some serious deep shit that he would have sneaked around to buy and send crypto to get out of.

So that's a scenario that could have happened, and would explain why he wouldn't want to tell the truth.

Alternatively - Ledger got hacked and a list of customers for the Nano S was stolen. So someone could use that for a targeted phishing attack. Perhaps the above would be a similar strategy

Edit: Aha! There are indeed warnings of active phishing attacks from Ledger: https://www.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/ck6o44/be_car...

Your nephew got phished, and is leaving that bit of the story out

I had this same issue for years, had seen doctors and a psychologist. Was tested and learned I had ADHD. Meds, coping strategies and general self-awareness helped in a big way.

But I also had this specific issue on certain days lingering even with ADHD treatment. My doctor suggested I had sleep apnea. Possibly related to sleep habits and possibly a very soft lumpy mattress. My wife and I got a new firm mattress and it really did the trick.

I know this will be an unpopular comment, but I've had a long-held theory that past lives / reincarnation is a real phenomenon with a biological mechanism that is as-yet unknown.

The theory being that trauma at time of death is somehow encrypted for the next generation and passed on shortly after death, particularly if a corpse enters the water or food supply.

The basis for this is a little embarrassing.. I had memories of being a bridge engineer, frequent dreams of falling off a very specific truss bridge in my head in childhood. To this day I'm terrified of certain types of truss bridges, which are coincidentally quite common upriver of where my parents lived when I was born, and where our water came from.

This theory would also explain why river burial is commonly associated with reincarnation. Committing the tissue of a deceased person into a community water supply would increase transfer of memory.

Fun fact - the "border zone" in which your 4th amendment rights are suspended and you are subject to search, is 100 miles wide and overlaps where the majority of Americans live and work

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

So, for a casual traveler who may have a phone with conversations peppered with unfavorable political views throughout - what is the best security hygiene in this situation?

Anyone have tips or tricks that average people can use, things that maybe don't involve having a separate phone etc?

In addition to the EFF Security Self Defense (https://ssd.eff.org/ ) I've also seen this circulated: https://securityinabox.org/en/

Personally I don't think these resources go far enough, and some of the methods recommended have obvious exploits, or are too complicated for the less tech literate. Lot's of work to be done in this area for sure

You can troll your way into a civil war, but you can't troll your way out of it.

The pendulum swings both ways, and right now it is swinging faster and harder than ever before in this country. When it swings back, in a tsunami of the unrelenting rage and profound hatred for the other side, there will be blood. That is the future.

You make a noble point, but it will not change anything at this stage. I am human. As are all of us. My well of empathy for Trump's people has gone completely bone dry. I am past the tipping point.

They elected an egotistical reality TV star, backed by a hostile foreign government, to the White House and he's taking a wrecking ball to every institution of federal government exactly as one would have expected him to. Any assertion that tears should be shed or some level of respect should be offered to Trump's people or duped Republicans, is absurd nonsense. The only feeling I have left for these people is rage and it grows with every passing day.

Things are going to get very very ugly soon

I'd like to find some software to help me manipulate the world order without being detected. Any cool projects I should look into?

I really truly do not care at all about the sensitivities of Trump supporters at this point.

Trump's base right now are people who have never met an Iranian, and would probably be quite happy to see your coworkers sent to Guantanamo. Trump's policies will stand because his base stands by them, and because the GOP rank-and-file fear Trump, and his people in the midterm elections.

If you want to do something, use your political awakening to help change some minds. At both the top and bottom of the power chain, doesn't matter. Steer the conversation

What's more worrisome is how fervently anti-science the new administration is. Academics may eventually be persecuted in the US across the board - as they are already at the EPA, USDA etc - and regardless of citizenship.

I firmly believe anyone with a brain should begin making contingency plans to regroup somewhere like Australia or Japan, outside of the reaches of far-right populism. An Erdogan-style academic purge may be on the agenda and sooner than we think

Interestingly I had my moment of clarity when I realized my Circle of Control can be far larger than what I had believed it to be.

Most humans believe in your viewpoint, but the truth is power is gained from groups. We are all simply a node in a larger network. Accepting and embracing that is the key to growing the Circle of Control. Becoming part of the right network alters the Circle of Control of the individual.

Don't get mad, get organized.

I am surprised by the sheer volume of tech professionals who have been responding to this article today by unapologetically reinforcing it's primary position. The idea that the industry should have no accountability for it's actions seems to be the jarring consensus.

I want to believe that those of us who are opposed to the use of technology purely for greed and power still outnumber, but am starting to feel like maybe we are an island and a dying breed, giving way to a new callous generation of technologists who wish to wield the power of social technology for only individual ambitions over the democratic idealism of collaboration that it was founded on. This is a dark time indeed

The "foreign intrusion" angle is a red herring. In my opinion, the assumption that a foreign hack would be the most likely vector for vote manipulation, which is being played up in tech circles, is the best evidence that the vote was in fact manipulated.

A tech worker or contractor with "alt-right" leanings could easily manipulate the vote without being detected. And there are plenty of them...

Play up the "Russia couldn't do this, you're insane" line and everyone assumes we're looking for outside intrusion by a foreign power, when in fact it is far more likely an intrusion would come from inside.

Why does it have to be a foreign government hacking?

An election tech worker or contractor with an agenda, could easily achieve the same results without having to go to the great lengths of breaking into the network using malware etc.

Many of the social media manipulation techniques used to spread disinformation right now, are things I experimented with in the early days of social media that I proudly discussed in public forums widely and were reproduced by others...

I feel as though the tech industry is collectively to blame for the global power grab that is taking place right now. I've devoted a significant amount of my time to trying to correct this, but it is so far beyond the capabilities of any single person or group at this point.. like a wildfire burning out of control and all I can do is sit and stare as it consumes everything around me

I've become beyond paranoid, there is clearly some secret IRC channel where the alt-right that are too sophisticated for 4chan are coordinating. The pile-on in HN has become like an intellectualized version of Facebook comments at this point

You're trying to normalize it throwaway account. I know what this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Based on the tone of comments around here lately, I'm getting the sense that HN has been populated by closeted alt-right for a while now.

Very happy to see some progress being made. I've been very disturbed by the rise of coordinated hate group activities like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/1...

Sure there is. Posting an article that was contrived by hate groups, is hate speech. Convincing someone to commit suicide because of their sexual orientation, political views, is hate speech. It's not that hard

So true too. A long long time ago I was actually involved with Adbusters.. later on, in between stints of automating knowledge workers out of existence, I worked to help engineer some of the viral marketing techniques that were weaponized in this election. After Brexit, I went completely insane from knowing what would happen this week. There was no way to stop it.

The problem is that virtually everyone dramatically underestimates the power of viral manipulation. People believe that they have the power to make their own choices, that they have their own thoughts. But the truth is, they really don't. At all. Manipulating a tribe of humans to your cause is all just a matter of effort and patience. My worldview is shaped by the information I have. I just happen to spend a lot of time consuming complex information. Most people don't have that luxury. So they're completely vulnerable. Social media is powerful beyond the capabilities that I think anyone ever envisioned. And it's begun to take on a new life of it's own.

And sure, Facebook and Twitter played a part in this information aspect certainly. But companies like Salesforce that automate people out of work, these companies have zero accountability for the people who get laid off when eliminated with CRM workflows for example. There's no framework for understanding the consequences of who you eliminate when you automate. How are these people supposed to feed their families when you've automated them out of work?

As a tech worker, I've been responsible for eliminating far more American jobs, many in the heartland, than any Mexican immigrant ever has. What have I done to deal with the consequences of that? Many, many people have been laid off because of the things I've built in the last 15 years. I ignored them, told myself they weren't valuable anyhow. We owe these people solutions for basic income, we owe them more opportunities for jobs out in the red states, the red counties of america. We created this. All of it.

Certainly. But this is about information. There are a lot of people who increasingly understand the dynamics of how the information economy affects popular opinion, how it affects the workforce, how it has disrupted work and yet done nothing to solve the problems that came with the consequences of that disruption.

And many on the left outside of the valley bubble really thought that a boom in the left-leaning Bay Area meant that there were powerful people there who had their backs in all of this. They feel very hurt that tech seemed to sit on the sidelines through the election, and in some regards pretty much enabled and profited off the mass-dissemination of misinformation.

So it's not just about corporate greed this time. It's about information, disruption, workforce automation, and the responsibilities that come from building and wielding powerful information tools.

A popular uprising against Silicon Valley is coming. Already I hear it from people in my life, all over the country.

They blame social media for allowing the Trump memes to warp people's opinion. They're starting to put the pieces together on unemployment and blame tech automation for taking jobs and not offering a replacement, especially in the heartland. They're angry with Silicon Valley execs for not putting up any visible fight against Trump. They're starting to see how clustering all the best paying jobs in major cities leaves people outside of the bubble desperate, seeing desperate solutions. A tidal wave of rage against the election is about to be directed towards the tech industry, it's just a matter of time.

The evidence that the pilots were deliberately masking their flight path shortly before the flight's disappearance, was pretty compelling. I've always felt that the plane was intentionally maneuvered somewhere, but clearly the destination was not dry land.

So we assume for a moment that some organized group deliberately did something to this aircraft. Who has the motivation to execute such a scheme?

Government agencies I rule out - because of lack of a cover story. It does a government no good to leave a massive mystery open to the court of press speculation, especially for so long. It grows distrust in the populace and gives the perception of incompetence, which undermines power. Plus the political risks of being uncovered are too great. There needs to be a cover.

I'd rule out corporations or business moguls for the same reason - leaving mysterious loose ends is not in their best interest. Too much risk to reputation.

Terrorists I rule out as well - they are motivated by public gestures that further the cause. They'd have claimed it immediately and even if the plot was steal the plane and use it later, they'd have done it already.

So what nefarious organization is left? What group would be OK with leaving a mysterious unsolved disappearance out in the open? Criminal syndicates.

Professional criminals are in the business of doing bad things and getting away with it without a trace. To a career criminal, an unsolved mystery is a point of pride.

If there was someone or something of extremely high value aboard the plane, perhaps being smuggled, organized criminals would have the motivation to extract it, far away from law enforcement or even satellites, and bury the evidence without a trace.

But they would have a difficult time landing an aircraft of that size anywhere on land without detection. Eventually it would turn up.

So how about on water? Ditch the plane gently on the ocean, Captain Sully style, extract whatever is in the cabin and then let it sink slowly. Disappears without a trace. Do it far enough away from civilization and nobody will find it.

Pretty elaborate heist, and absurdly risky. But criminals aren't known for being overly risk averse. And even if they botched the job, we'd never know about it.

So that's my theory over who would be responsible. Definitely backed up by what you're saying about the level of organized crime in the Malaysian political world.

That plane was carrying some person or thing that a highly corrupt, well financed individual or group wanted very badly - either to take for themselves or destroy. And so far, they've gotten away with it.