How disappointing it is to see how easily some leaders in our industry abandon their principles, and how cheaply they sell out their fellow man.
The tech industry was never perfect. It was never a charity. But there was a time, several years ago now, when people were more driven to build things that delighted others.
That was always a lie. Gates became the richest pedo in the world building a monopoly of bad software and destroying other people's businesses. Since then things only got worse.
Just last week, two NYPD cops were indicted for evidence tampering for doing exactly that.
The indicted cops responded to an off-duty cop's DUI crash. They texted each other on their personal phones so as not to create a record. They positioned their bodycams so as not to capture the incident. At one point, one of the cops held the other's to make it look as if he was still standing there while he secretly called their supervisor. They then let the drunk cop drive away. Hours later, another officer found the car parked on the sidewalk. That officer did finally arrest him.
"These police officers did their job. We should not be here today," said union president Patrick Hendry, who accused the DA of targeting the officers. "He needs to support officers instead of going after them. Enough is enough."
To their credit, these charges came based on a referral from NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, though it was 4 years later.
Global Entry and PreCheck are not going to be the only consequences. The people in these databases are considered to be domestic terrorists.
Presidential Memorandum NSPM-7 includes "civil disorder" in its list of acts of "domestic terrorism." Its indicia of "terroristic activities" includes extremely vague language like "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism" and "extremism on migration, race, and gender" and "hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality".[^1]
I sincerely hope that the engineers responsible for these technologies have fully grasped where things seem headed. This country is teetering on a knife's edge. Maybe more precariously than we know. Nobody can know for sure if we've tipped too far until it's too late.
The economy cannot thrive in a vacuum of normalcy and stability. If things escalate into something akin to The Troubles... I hope that's factored into their cost-benefit analysis.
Just know that if you vote for someone like Newsom, awfulness such as this memorandum isn't getting scrapped, and the one who replaces him 4 years later will be someone who's less incompetent and doesn't shit his pants on live television.
I've wanted a music player like the early versions of iTunes for a while, and this looks like it might fit the bill.
Those who've only known Music.app and later iTunes versions might be surprised to learn that there was a time when iTunes actually had a clean, intuitive UI: https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/itunes-app
Honestly seems like if you just stay on the latest-and-greatest you'll stay ahead of Cellebrite long enough.
I'll be amused when Apple finally drops a portless iPhone as the next step ahead.
(Apple already has their Qi2/Magsafe setup, and they already have been using 60GHz wireless USB for quite some time now internally with the Apple Watch for diagnostics and service management since Series 7.)
> Honestly seems like if you just stay on the latest-and-greatest you'll stay ahead of Cellebrite long enough.
I don't know, even the latest and greatest is eventually cracked, or they can just hold your device in evidence until the capability is there a few weeks (or months) later.
Furthermore by using an official OS from a vendor like Apple (or Google, Samsung) there's always the possibility that they could target your device with a specially crafted update, especially if you're in really big trouble.
The tech industry was never perfect. It was never a charity. But there was a time, several years ago now, when people were more driven to build things that delighted others.
reply