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Matt BlazeGod, the number of techbros here who are confident in their ability to resist targeted attacks from sophisticated national intelligence agencies is terrifying, but also explains a lot about why Silicon Valley is the way it is.
Misuse Case@mattblaze I’d bet a lot of them are some of the easiest people in the world to social engineer, too
Luis Villa@mattblaze the Mickens passage that was circulating yesterday is the only accurate tech-guy statement on this issue
Ruth [☕️ 👩🏻💻📚✍🏻🧵🪡🍵]@luis_in_brief oh which Mickens passage? I enjoy reading his thoughts
@platypus search in here for “mossad” https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf
@luis_in_brief Oh wow the whole thing was great. And yes, extremely on point.
cetan@platypus @luis_in_brief what a great read. thank you for the link!
anthony@mattblaze I always wished I had half the self-confidence of the techbros to be constantly wrong.
Kevin Riggle@mattblaze The first rule of propaganda club is that propaganda works on you even if you know how propaganda works. (Even if you wrote it, really)
Eleanor Saitta@mattblaze
As someone who's unfortunately had to look at this professionally on behalf of people who didn't have half the money or resources they do, it's genuinely complicated. Like, yes, if they're willing to kill, a lot of your folks will die. But not all of them, and they aren't always, and in those probabilities etc. live many movements and peoples and the reverse — it Mossad wants to Mossad you, give up instantly, I honestly hate with a serious burning professional passion. There are no good answers to any of this, but telling people to never resist a state is just fellating the boot.
Again, not that you're doing this but argh nuance online etc etc
@dymaxion the (successful) people I know who work against sophisticated national adversaries (in various capacities) are all - universally - remarkably humble about their own limitations.
@mattblaze
Very much so. The goal is to statistically reduce the rate at which you lose. Winning is something that happens at another timescale entirely.
And yes, not those bros and their attitude at all. It's more that the folks in the industry who aren't those bros and also aren't the people who actually have to deal with the impact of these organizations do rather manage to paint a picture of abject hopelessness. A time and a place for every message, I guess.
@dymaxion “We can’t stop them, but we can make them work for it” is a useful model.
@mattblaze
Very much so. And "what can we get done between not and when they stop us"
Very much so. And "what can we get done between not and when they stop us"
Filene Taylor@dymaxion I'm definitely following you because I am just now being versed on all sorts of security structures I'd need to even start making things difficult. And also because I've got my eye on making a NGO or.. Five 😂🥲💖
Tobias Fiebig@mattblaze I wanted to post a submarine here. sadly, the emoji seems to be missing.
Mike@mattblaze Hey now!! Strictly speaking my mind and body WILL provide resistance to the explosion thank you very much. Approximately to the tune of 200lbs x 9.81m/s^2 x the coefficient of nice pair of Nike shoes...
Alexander The 1st@mattblaze "Rip to Hezbollah but I'm built different; now if you excuse me, I'm going to buy a couple walkie-talkies on Temu - they're 75% off on sale!"
Brian MacDonald@mattblaze I've been involved in marketing to techbros, directly or indirectly, for most of my career. The fact that they consider themselves too sophisticated to fall for marketing is the key to marketing to them.
Bill Zaumen@bmac @mattblaze You might want to listen to a phone call I got from a telemarketer's manager(?). I'm not sure if his rant was due to me telling them I'm on the do not call list, me asking them how they got my phone number and not talking about anything else, or the result of me filing an FTC complaint citing repeated calls.
fmobus@mattblaze I am waiting in baited breath for said bros to come up with a web3 crypto GenAI solution
Viss@mattblaze did you see all the kids whining that they werent targeted in a north korean social engineeing campaign a couple years ago?
just_one_bear@mattblaze If I am ever a target of a sophisticated (hell, semi-sophisticated, even) national intelligence agency then I know the end of the road is that I am toast. My only hope is that I can find a way to become an expensive target. Or maybe a REALLY annoying one.
Kim Scheinberg@mattblaze
According to a poll from YouGov, one in eight men believe they could score a point in a tennis match against Serena Williams
7% of American men believe they could take a grizzly bear unarmed and 9% fancy their chances against an elephant
Quite a few of the tech bros think they can ride the Trump tiger and not get thrown off
The rarest element in Silicon Valley isn't unobtanium, it's humility
Max Leibman@kims @mattblaze I don’t even fancy my chances against Serena Williams if I’m unarmed.
@kims I suspect I could score a point in a tennis match against a grizzly bear, but would probably let the bear win to avoid pissing it off.
kira :3@mattblaze i like how much you could genericize this post and still have it be true lmao
David H. McCoyYou could slap most of these cowards in the mouth and they wouldn’t do a thing.
Violated Toe@mattblaze Well if they use qubes os they might stand a chance. And if they wipe a ton of data they could successfully "resist" such a attack.
Florian 'floe' Echtler@mattblaze If any three-letter agency (or the Mossad, for that matter) really is out to get you, then you're toast. Period.
Kevin Karhan 
@mattblaze espechally when the same #TechBros refuse to demand.and follow basic #security and #transparency demands like #repairable devices and #auditabke sourcecode...
Krutonium://@mattblaze Well, don't count me amongst them.
My strategy is to minimize myself as a target, accept that I am not invulnerable, and make it so that if the choice is between me and someone else, that the someone else is easier, and thus complete the minimizing myself as a target part of the plane.
That said if I'm being targeted by a Nation State or Terrorist Organization, I'm fucked.
Tom BortelsYour (and my) ability to resist a state-level actor is inversely proportional to the extent to which they notice you. If you become the target of their focused attention - you're hosed.
So - if your adversary is the state, any state - you need to be invisible. Or at least entirely inconspicuous and non-threatening.
Fortunately, in my day-to-day I'm dealing with boring "please don't click that link in the email / no your terraform doesn't need admin" types of threats, ie. Human stupidity.