It seems extremely unfair. Rather than focusing on the content, you're criticizing tone. It comes off as a structured tactic, given that famous image of Mudge with unkempt hair in a suit sitting before Congress, intended to draw attention away from his words and onto his rough edges. It's an ad hominem attack of a particularly cheap variety.
What sounds immature, unprofessional, and out of depth is Agrawal's mass e-mail tarnishing Zatko's reputation, a tactic that your post seems to repeat from a different angle.
I'd rather have the theory of general relativity written in crayon, than the most beautiful calligraphic illustration of nonsense. Wouldn't you?
With all due respect, no you aren't. There isn't any criticism of the actual content in your post. It's all critiquing the tone - what style he used when writing, who you think he thinks his audience is, how informal his phrasing is. None of that has ANYTHING to do with content, it's all about form.
You might have incorrectly attributed a post/comment to me. There is no criticism of tone in my post. Nothing about style, audience, formality.
My comment is based on the following:
Much of the first 15-20 pages are complaints about the company optimizing and incentivizing what he believes to be the wrong metric. There is nothing illegal about it. Twitter are clear about it, shareholders know what they are trying to do. He's naive if he thinks it's a legal issue. It's probably not even a moral or business issue - if raw bot count becomes a user experience problem, it will cause mDAU to drop.
He appears unprofessional in his constant wanting to go to the board - he was a security lead, it's not his place to go to the board. He reported to a guy who reported to a guy who reported to the board.
This seems like a bad comparison. Hanging from cranes isn't a form of criminal assault that some people experience, as "being assaulted in the USA" is. It's a form of standardized systematic judicial punishment of gay people in Iran. Not quite the same thing.
Why is it odd that regulations would require public schools to display the motto of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or any of that? These things seem like exactly what every country does.
[edit - This comment is currently at -2, less than 10 minutes after posting it. HN, you're changing, and not for the better...]
[edit #2 - I don't think this has been a very good thread at all.]
It's certainly not normal in my country for schools to display the country's motto or flag, nor do children pledge allegiance to anything. We did sing some hymns though.
This may not come as a surprise but Germany is neither doing flags, nor anthem singing or any kind of pledge.
The day begins with "Good morning" - "Good morning Ms/Mr X".
And being a secular country there is no prayer in school either (however there is religion as a school subject if you are a member of one of the major churches (+ sometimes Islam is offered as well)) or ethics if you are not.
Germany is less surprising to me, given the history involved. Based on what I am looking into on Google Maps, however, it hardly seems to be a phenomenon confined to the US, and at least based on my spot checks it seems to be more common than not for public schools to display national flags.
You really think that the USSR of the early 1940s could have fought that era's Germany and Japan at once?
What about the comments by no less than Admiral Zhukov himself acknowledging that in his view, the USSR couldn't have defeated Germany without US assistance?
A pledge or prayer would be unthinkable in France for instance.
We do not display the French flag in schools (for no particular reason, except that you would need someone to take care of that), you would find Forbes on official buildings.
Its very much a US thing. Sure other countrys have flags and they like them but Americans really take it to a whole other level. In the uk every school I wen't to had a flag pole but would only fly a flag on special occasions such as sporting events and we would fly sports flags. In America they seem to worship their flag when I see they are scared to let it touch the ground.
From the outside it looks like Americans value the flag more than they value other Americans, in the uk we value brits more than we value the British flag as the flag is just a representation of the people.
Yes I am sure. [0] The first Canadian school I looked at on google maps doesn't even have a flag pole never mind the flag. If this school was in America I would expect it to be burnt out by the end of the day for such a disgusting display.
not in NZ either, we sang hymns in school assembly when I was a kid but these days more that half of us don't believe in religion - you have to choose to pay to go to a special school if you want to be taught god stuff, which is as it should be
In czech republic state flag is not always displayed.
Some schools have picture of president in classrooms but it is more of a rare sight.
Also there is a separate subject about topics ranging from state symbols to law creation.
so yes it probably is US thing
It's interesting that in the countries where it seems to be less common, everyone assumes that displaying flags outside of schools is a US-only thing, when spot checks of Google Maps seem to suggest that it's relatively common throughout the world.
Americans get a lot of flak for assuming the world looks like their backyard, but maybe this is a case of the reverse?
I don't see why, given that looking through Google Maps seems to suggest that it's at least as common as not...
Let me just step back and observe that this is possibly the worst way to do cultural exchanges. Why does everyone have to take an attitude of superiority and judgement, instead of objective inquiry and mutual discovery?
Perhaps it's because you didn't start the exchange with enquiry, but instead claimed that what happens in your country is "exactly what every country does"
Because it’s a religious motto. It’s not just the national motto.
AND as mentioned by another comment, the specific law in question was explicitly created to push Christianity onto school kids, according to the creators.
And pushing religion on someone in school is against americas stated ideals.
I don't think I've ever seen "In God We Trust" on anything but US currency. I have heard of merchants putting up signs saying "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", but have never seen such a sign. And I did attend schools that had the pledge of allegiance.
Pop legal quiz - does "waving due diligence rights" during an acquisition remove the other party's liability for fraud they've committed against the prospective buyer?
"All multifarious means which human ingenuity can devise, and which are resorted to by one individual to get an advantage over another by false suggestions or suppression of the truth. It includes all surprises, tricks, cunning or dissembling, and any unfair way which another is cheated."
So is Musk guilty of defrauding twitter by using aggressive acquisition tactics as a pretense to get access to internal nonpublic information to use against them?
The only honest answer I can give there is, "I don't know". So far as I'm aware, Twitter hasn't alleged that, no evidence has been presented supporting such an allegation, and generally it seems a heavy burden to present a court with convincing evidence of a conspiratorial theory like that, but I can't categorically say what Elon Musk's motives weren't.
There seems to be the impression that "waiving due diligence" in an acquisition is some license for the seller to defraud the potential buyer without recourse.
If Mudge's allegations are true that Twitter has been defrauding the public in their reporting, failing to abide by the terms of a federal consent decree, and generally turning a blind eye to real problems to prop up their image, then "waived due diligence" or not, Musk has an out from the acquisition, and cause for a significant tort claim.
Some options that shareholders would have in the situation where investors were knowingly deceived by false disclosures of a publicly traded company are missing from this response.
Mudge alleges that their disclosures were a less than good faith attempt to gauge the figure.
Mudge also raises a number of allegations not pertaining to bots, including that Twitter has deliberately failed to abide by the terms of a federal consent decree. If proven out, that fact alone would constitute material adverse affect.
Where do you see that info in the Verge article? All I can see is "he filed last month" (which would be July 2022) - the month Musk "officially" backed out and at least a month after he started doing the "I don't want Twitter any more" dance.
> John Tye, founder of Whistleblower Aid and Zatko's lawyer, told CNN that Zatko has not been in contact with Musk, and said Zatko began the whistleblower process before there was any indication of Musk's involvement with Twitter.
I don't think you understand how poorly attacking Mudge's character or insinuating that he's driven by some unethical ulterior motive is going to work out. Mudge is... he's Mudge. He's a known quantity, and one everyone wishes we had more of. When he says something like this, smart people listen intently.
Building a successful security organization is very easy, it just starts higher up the food chain than whatever experts you hire to do it. Security is a cultural practice, it's not a feature, it's not a bolt-on. To the extent that your security organization influences and receives buy-in from your corporate culture, becoming a part of your organization's identity, it will be successful.
I think this is key. If you don't have a good security culture, where people understand and have ingrained proper security practices, you're toast, no matter who else you hire.
Google has good security practices, can implement those in any big corp as they are very straightforward. Mudge previously worked at Google so I'd assume he was hired to help Twitter security get better by implementing some practices from Google. But maybe he was just hired to look like Twitter cared and they didn't really want to change anything.
Google also has a very good ingrained security culture. They understand that they hold on to people's most private and critical data, and rock-solid security has to be a cornerstone of their business.
Develop sufficient in-house subject matter expertise so that you're not depending on sales consultants to do your cyber program for you.
Develop an empirical understanding of risk management. While we can't predict the future, through well established techniques and adequate resourcing, professionals can achieve consistent results that are far better than random guessing. Risk management principles drive not just corporate stragegy writ large, but entire industries like banking and insurance.
What sounds immature, unprofessional, and out of depth is Agrawal's mass e-mail tarnishing Zatko's reputation, a tactic that your post seems to repeat from a different angle.
I'd rather have the theory of general relativity written in crayon, than the most beautiful calligraphic illustration of nonsense. Wouldn't you?