Comment by anonymous908213
14 hours ago
> incompetence is always more likely than malice.
"Incompetence" of this degree is malice. It is actively malicious to create a system that automatically locks people out of their accounts with absolutely no possibility for human review or recourse short of getting traction in the media. "No sir, I didn't grind those orphans up. It was this orphan grinding machine I made that did it, teehee!"
i am positive that you understand the spirit of what that saying means.
incompetence is always more likely than [intentional, directed] malice.
microsoft employees did not deliberately attack the wireguard project with a goal of taking it down for whatever grand scheme people's hatred cooks up. if you have evidence that microsoft did this deliberately to ruin the wireguard project, please forward it along to jason (the wireguard maintainer) and several news outlets.
Where possible I recommend not caring because figuring out whether malice was present is difficult and you can likely address a problem without needing to be sure.
For example by creating working processes which never end up "accidentally" causing awful outcomes. This is sometimes more expensive, but we should ensure that the resulting lack of goodwill if you don't is unaffordable.
Worst case there is malice and you've now made it more difficult to hide the malice so you've at least made things easier for those who remain committed to looking for malice, including criminal prosecutors.
>Worst case there is malice and you've now made it more difficult to hide the malice so you've at least made things easier for those who remain committed to looking for malice, including criminal prosecutors.
i am quoting the maintainer of the project. take it up with them if you think microsoft coordinated a directed attack on their project.
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And I'm positive that you understand the spirit of the post you're replying to.
The saying implies that incompetence and malice are polar opposites. They're not.
>The saying implies that incompetence and malice are polar opposites.
it does not
Microsoft's incompetence is certainly reckless at a minimum, and often manifests in ways that come across as misanthropic toward their users. They don't really fit the pattern of mere bumbling fools.
what about pattern of bumbling fools on crack ?
sure!
my point was that it wasnt a deliberate conspiracy/attack to fuck over wireguard, which would be an absolutely crazy story if it were true.
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And the person you are responding is asserting that the response to incompetence of this level should be the SAME as if it directed and intentional malice. Which is a completely valid way to view a fuckup like this.
>response to incompetence of this level should be the SAME
sure.
but this was not a deliberate attack by microsoft employees to shutdown wireguard. that is what i was trying to say and the essence of the quote in question.
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Malicious people are quite good at feigning incompetence.
I mean, sure, but at a certain point negligent incompetence is directly harmful and the motives or lack thereof are just context.
"just context" is important.
i get that everyone has a frothing-at-the-mouth extreme hatred to microsoft and its employees. but microsoft did not say "fuck jason, fuck wireguard, lets try and shut that down". that would be a way different story.
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Except that the system that removes culpability, visibility and consequences of this kind of abuse is set up deliberately to avoid liability and consequences of such actions.
This isn't a tee-hee accident, this is deliberate organizational design which removed any kind of bad consequences or even thought about what the software does to user from the engineers at Microsoft. They're happy about that. They now don't need to deal with that. And if you'll ask them, they will refuse a change that will make them responsible for abuse of their users.
So, to hell with them :)
and even with all of that in mind, this was not a coordinated microsoft attack against wireguard. which was my point.
i am in no way defending microsoft. just pointing out that the conspiracy-theorists suggesting that some exec at microsoft specifically targeted wireguard for whatever nefarious purpose was, well, a conspiracy.