Unfortunately, I have the feeling this is more "vibes" based than anything else, or projection on the behalf the person proposing it, because something like this is exactly what they think they would do. Force a corporation to hot patch a malicious firmware update to cripple the Internet infra of an adversary nation. My problem with that line of thinking is that technically, even American companies have an incentive to do that once they get big enough, and picking the American manufacturers who get to be winners essentially guarantees they will become big enough to be problematic. I have a much bigger problem with that.

The side effect of causing an entire country's worth of enterprises to suddenly have to replace all of their networking gear stock is surely only a coincidence, and not beneficial to someone's portfolio, of course.

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON CAPITAL AND LABOR

Oh hohm. Such a great mouthpiece Pope Leo XIII was for extolling and providing cover for the excesses of the worst breed of capitalist. Whilst my experience with such religious writing is used to coming away from them not wholely satisfied one way or another, this particular piece was heavily biased toward the "Captain's of Industry" and capitalist civilizations of the time. Explicitly condemning the practices by which labor can usurp the yoke of the unjustly enriched, and no consideration whatsoever against the fact that as capital centralizes, there are fewer and fewer places to actually look for employment that isn't in one way or another unconscionable to the Soul. Which, thankfully, the fellow at least had the decency to recognize that one isn't at, nor should be at liberty to give one's soul up because the only people signing cheques are those that are most conditioned to being in service not to anyone else, but merely to themselves.

For instance, it places the burden of the yoke of thrift equally on all men, without recognizing that that yoke provides exactly the spiritual cover required for the pernicious greedmonger to sleep soundly after condemning thousands to a situation where in their self-preservation is not guaranteed.

I see some mild concessions to the working class, which we have plenty of history from which to reason that even with a Papal acknowledgement, these words did not suffice to tilt the behavior of men away from ungodly and abusive treatment of their fellow men until such time as they were confronted with force. That the Pope of all people then doubled down by pointing out that "agitators would arise to foment violence and revolt" without taking into consideration that is the only language left that will be understood by the man whose heart has sufficiently hardened to enable him to with a stroke of a pen condemn thousands to millions, nay billions at a time to suffering. To usurp their livelihoods as his own to be rented back, ensuring that no ownership is onto his potential competitors conferred upon which could be built the means to diminish his own prosperity.

No... Pope Leo XIII, your encyclical is in places valid, but woefully out of date and in need of a massive update. Even in it's time, that wording would have been fairly what we today call "milquetoast" in terms of providing the necessary spiritual force to temper the excesses of man's vices. Our current day, is evidence enough of that. Where instead of true virtue and the ability of all to live prosperously, we have a divided class of those seeking desperately to get by, and those seeking desperately to ensure no one gets by them.

Whilst I'm not Catholic, I do do tend to honor the tradition of firmly worded letters nailed to their doors to keep them honest. This encyclical in it's time may have seemed fine, but with hindsight reeks of inadequacy and hedging, with excessive pandering to the already wealthy. This alone explains to me greatly why the labor movements of the late 1800's and early 1900's were not only as bad as they were, but absolutely necessary. If Leo XIV can't do any better than this, then it may once again come to bloodshed. The feedback loop is much tighter, and news travels much faster. Likely why the wealthy are doing everything they can to weight media outlets in their favor, and destroy any unregulated medium of anonymous communication. For these men are greedy, but not stupid. They know deep down the Lord dost tolerate the machinations of the Devil to test the tendencies of humankind, and they fear the inevitable outcome that will arise when the rest of mankind through privation is forced to harden their hearts as they (the wealthy) have. For in the eye's of one who has only their Soul left to bargain with, laid bare is the banal veil of Evil, and if one is to meet their Maker earlier than planned as a result of another man's artifice... Well. Justice doth favor action, whereas the banal finds fertile sustenance in the inaction of vacuous platitude debated endlessly.

Perhaps I am one of the Agitators of which the Pope spoke. Yet I feel no pause at any of the words I have hitherto written. So do with them what you will. If what we have to live with is supposed to be fine, I do not agree that anything about it is what one could conscionably call just.

You aren't wrong. There's definitely going to be a need to drag people kicking and screaming to enlightenment unfortunately. Too much money to be made at stake otherwise.

The entire Trusted Computing initiative had exactly one benefactor, and it was people looking to constrain what you did on your own machine. Y'all just set up your "End-of-Analysis" goalposts too early, and blinded yourselves to the maliciousness bundled in silver tongued beneficent intentions.

We'd be better off as a society all recognizing the inherent risk of computation than lulling people into a habit of "trust us bro" espoused by platform providers. Anyone trying to sell Trust is someone you can't afford to be trusting of.

I'll live with the threat of rootkits if it means no one can pull this kind of shit.

Not considering greed a blatant demonstration of malice has to be the single dumbest thing our society has normalized.

I would not advise. If you're feeling what you are feeling now, the entire job in QA within the software field is to be essentially "controlled opposition". Unless you bust into Food Safety, Aeronautics, manufacturing, or medical devices/boomed, you will not be anything but someone the CTO is gonna go "fuck it, override" anyway. Over 14+ years experience.

The problem is management. The only solution is to make them responsible for cleaning up the consequences of their own actions, and not allowing them to delegate the task It is the only way. We have made it far to easy for assholes not responsible for doing the work to get positions managing it. We have to fix that if we're ever going to get back on the right track.

>Outside of that many of the position in the UK are working Defence, Intelligence or Law Enforcement. All of those I have ethical reasons why I won't work for them. Outside of that there is Gambling, Pay day loans, and spooky stuff like tracking people via facial recognition.

Ah, someone else feeling the sting of actually having Ethics. I feel your pain. I truly do. Our societies are dying because we forgot capitalism wasn't it's own end, but was supposed to be a means to manage solving societal ills. Once you go finance for finance sake, you end up creating more ills than you solve just because there is profit to be made.

All I can say is keep pushing. The system is on the verge of breakdown, and if the only way to get people paying attention to it is to let it happen... Then that's just what we're going to have to do I guess.