And even with the 'cannon' in China, do we know who lit the fuse?

Almost certainly the same people who arranged for NXDOMAIN on github.com a few weeks back. They really hate that there are open source anti-censorship tools on there.

They had to stop breaking DNS for github since most of China's Internet developers couldn't get any work done anymore.

That Chinese developers are freely using a California hosting service which has benefits to everybody in the world, and everybody recognizes that the "damage" here is government, it actually gives me a bit of hope. People do prefer to cooperate on all things, until a few sociopaths get a set of keys.

Is this a Bayer or Shell astroturfer here to spread disinfo?

Well, not every day (or even every month), but that's not impossible at a nice anniversary meal with wine, steaks, and dessert.

(It helps if you live in San Francisco and get used thinking of a $12 burger and fries as a cheap lunch.)

This one?

"As a general thing, I have not 'duped the world' nor attempted to do so... I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told."

The one you're likely thinking of is irrelevant here, because I've spent more on dinners than I did on my Sport watch that's due for delivery today. You say "suckers", I say "people who don't mind spending $350 on a watch they'll be using every day and that's easily worth the money in sheer entertainment value".

Always someone else's.

Hint: not all your new hires will be cute Asian gamer chicks in wheelchairs.

They do, and the problem is that they treat it exactly like one. When you buy a lock, do you immediately re-key it? No: you use it as-is. Now maybe if the key looked very suspicious, like say it was a perfect sine or square wave or it was completely smooth, then you might ask the blacksmith whether that's normal. I bet those shopkeepers would be asking the same of their POS installer if the password was "123456" or "111111".

But to their (and my) untrained eye, "166816" looks reasonably random. It looks as random as my Schlage house key does. Maybe there's a locksmith forum where experts are making fun of me for not changing my obviously default lock. After all, they can tell at a glance that I have the standard factory issue! How stupid am I for using it without making my own pattern!

No, I think you're exactly wrong. People think of these passwords as keys. They use the ones manufacturers give them. They hand them out to the same staff that have keys to the front door and cash drawers. They don't routinely change them when people quit. They don't audit their usage. They treat them just like the little medal danglies on the ring in their pocket, no more, no less. We've done a very poor job of telling them why they should think otherwise.

Actual jobs?

Look, you may pay for music on iTunes, but most people don't.

I can't help that you don't get practical economics.