Sigh. Because of the typical boring legal nature of these conflicts, we may well never know the whole story. Perhaps something else he wanted to do conflicted with The Simpsons in some way, and he's just gotten go-ahead to do it, in writing. But because E.P. Al Jean said you should be skeptical, you automatically are. He successfully framed the debate for you to be specifically over time.

Lately? If you believe this is a new phenomenon I have some tulip bulbs I'd like to sell you.

They literally have whole cities just lying around idle. I mean, Spain's got one, sure, but they have several. The economy never developed sufficiently to employ people in jobs that would permit them to live in developed cities in a capitalist society... so the places rot. If they had chosen people to just move into them by merit, or hell had a lottery, the situation would be better.

Capitalism only works when you have free markets and China is the opposite of that. When you have some businesses which clearly have state sponsorship (notably when their whole business model is lying on customs forms) the game is rigged and it doesn't work.

Here in the USA, the robber barons perverted capitalism for their own ends. In China, whatever kind of barons they have over there are preventing it from developing, for their own ends. Same problem, from different ends.

Well, now I know what the one thing is.

Looking forward to per-tab process separation. But I still wish they would rip out the crap and revert the interface.

Conflict detected. They'd get superior care if you're the kind of person who would go give patients your illness.

They'll fix 'em good, don't you worry.

You forgot c3po and r2d2, who must be in every movie no matter how hard you have to strain.

I do, but I don't, respectively. I only watch TV on Netflix. I listen to music from my phone when in the car. Fuck ads.

€144,000 annually is comfortable living by any metric.

Getting deeper into bed with them is not a sensible decision either. It may be necessary in the short term but what's the exit strategy? The most sensible decision would be to avoid putting yourself in the position where you have to make that choice. Failing that, I would personally take my chances with the authorities. Caving to blackmail is never a winning move in the long term.

If you don't want to get fleas don't lay down with dogs. The "mob" (a misleading title, given that TFA doesn't mention Cosa Nostra or any other organized crime syndicate....) didn't pick these two at random and hold guns to their head. They got involved with them willingly; one of the two was seeking start up capital for a business venture and quite likely ignored the little voice inside of his head because of greed. An old adage comes to mind, "If it sounds too good to be true....."

Incidentally, the "mob" as traditionally discussed in the United States doesn't tend to go after random citizens. They typically get hooks into their victims because of the victim's own bad judgment. Loansharking, gambling, prostitution, drugs, and so forth. At the street level the vast majority of violent crime is common criminal on common criminal. There aren't too many places in the First World where taxpaying citizens have to really worry about becoming a statistic. Common sense goes a long way....

Read TFA. Specifically these paragraphs:

To his surprise, Adibelli agreed. “If you wanted out, why didn’t you let us know?” he said. Maertens was too scared to bring up the beating and the kidnapping and death threats. “Obviously, you know we’re not in a legal business,” Adibelli added. “So if you talk to anyone, we know where you and your family live.”

Adibelli brought Van De Moere down next and asked him if he wanted out, too. Van De Moere said yes.

There was only one condition of the release: Van De Moere had to give Okul an intensive training session on Linux, the operating system on which Metasploit, the hacking software, is based. A few weeks later, according to police and interviews, he did so over one weekend at a Holiday Inn in Ghent. In November, Van De Moere returned two antennas and had a couple of beers with Okul. That was the last either man would see of the Turks.

Something doesn't jive here. The type of people that are willing to actually hold a gun to your head are not the type of people that are willing to let you walk away simply by giving your notice. I don't doubt that there was some level of intimidation at play but there were apparently limits to how far the bad guys were willing to go. Which begs the question of why these two didn't go to the authorities after they "got out." Perhaps they didn't wish to part with the €25,000 in cash they had previously received?

s/brandy/drool/

These two were making €12,000 and €20,000 per month, before their involvement with the criminal element. One of them was seeking start up capital for a business venture and allowed himself to get roped in that way. If you give them the benefit of the doubt the best you can say about them is they were naive. In the worst reading they were greedy and willfully complicit. I suspect reality falls between those two extremes.

Blackmail is illegal. One crime at a time. Releasing this data, done well, won't lead back to you. Blackmail is only useful if you get paid, and that creates a trail. You know they can scan and record the serials in 1 million in small non-sequential bills in a pretty short period these days, right?

Here's the problem with doing business with criminals, whether they're ordinarily-labeled "criminals" or intelligence agencies or whatever: if they're incompetent, you don't want to do business with them because of all the ways in which they can implicate you. But if they're competent, you don't want to do business with them because of all the ways in which they could take advantage of you. If they're incompetent, then they ought to be little danger to you, so you don't need that kind of protection. If they're competent, then they can and will do anything to you, and they're probably smart enough to have some third party check your work and look for back doors... and when they find them, your ass is grass.

These guys will be lucky if they get to go on drawing breath.