Or their fans - consequently.

I am speaking from a position with a fair bit of inside knowledge within the industry. Executive decisions do not mirror the whole workplace. Frequently there are engineers and employees who, despite the position they put themselves in, speak up for the end users cause. This is shown time and again through leaks, inquiries, and whistleblowing. It is an exhausting position to take and in most cases a thankless job. Seeing someone applaud your efforts, regardless of outcome, can be a meaningful morale boost.

Speaking directly to this topic: tags exist and already are being used. Recall that it is not just Google who provides these… apple and other platforms do as well. They have their use which arguably was the intent originally… but as with all tools they can be abused. Apple and Google have acknowledged this but it is difficult to put the genie back in the bottle… so solutions must be provided. This is one of those solutions. It’s a start- and will likely result in some people being protected where they otherwise would not have been. That is praiseworthy in my opinion. It is in its own way a check against unregulated tracking that is user controlled. That is good. Does it change the company or its mandate? No. But these are two different things.

So I’ll pose a question: by your mind everyone working for Google is evil? Every department. Every engineer. There is no saving the ship- so why bother? I have more to expand on this but I’d be curious as to your perspective.

CTF Face Instagib

IYKYK. Fond memories.

While yes: Google has over time become almost pure evil in a lot of aspects - that doesn’t mean they are incapable of doing a good thing. We should look to applaud the good the same as we condemn the bad. This isn’t perfect but is definitely a welcome step in the right direction.

Not immediately. Gotta give that teaser trial to hook you…

In some cases it fails to run properly which can and does flag users as cheaters. I’ve had a few long back and forths with a few different support teams to get accounts unbanned for exactly that.

Yeah malware is everywhere - This could simply be a product of an individual actor abusing their position in a supply chain… but this also goes for hardware as well. It is certainly a more difficult vector to attack from but due to its ‘level’ it’s a valuable position to compromise.

Can’t wait until this spurs the security community into doing a deep look at the roms on these cheap Chinese boards. Yeah the malware was caught - but what’s more important is the intent. This is a country that is constantly behind breaches and botnets… and here we have these PCs being marketed as router replacents and mini servers. It doesn’t take much to figure out that this is free back door territory.

They still haven’t dumped all those chips they claimed on their last three earnings calls. Expect the 5000 series to have a familiar flavor.