It should have been prevented economically before this instead of what actually happened

You just let us know you're racist for free thanks

What makes you think it ended?

That is why I wrote "the employees may care" and NOT "Trump may care"...

The way to do this is to finally start taking IT security seriously. The EU has started with the CRA and the GDPR (and to a lesser degree the DSA). The US seems to be moving backwards at the moment.

But this is the only way. When a bridge or a building collapses, they find who screwed up and that has real, sometimes personal consequences. If Azure gets hacked or is completely open to attackers (again), nothing happens to anybody. That has to stop.

Did get pirates handed anyways, maybe a bit more quietly.

The employees may care if they basically cannot travel internationally anymore. If they are smart enough to understand they have no protection against the law abroad.

Also note that when (not if) they hack the wrong target, these people become criminals. That is a primary reason why warfare and offensive intelligence operations never get handed to the private sector.

Obviously, "Hacking back" is abysmally stupid as well, because everybody uses hacked machines belonging to other people as proxies, often long chains of them. Hence it is pretty much impossible to not do massive collateral damage. And as to the changes of success? Well. How many of these attackers have been identified so far and how many are in prison? Wight, basically a tiny number. Because this approach does not work.

I'm in favor of enforcement of laws which protect rights, but it's cheap and easy to get such devices, and there are valid reasons for them to exist — like knives.

You could cook with only shorter knives. It would be a lot more difficult (I also cook) but it would be possible.

You are a dumb American that thinks everybody is always after money. NO. European privacy laws are something you are probably completely unfamiliar with: Laws that protect citizens. The financial penalties are not a revenue mechanism.

Hidden recording and then posting that on social media without consent can land you in prison in Germany. Now, component (!) sales are legal, but making a "covert surveillance device" is not. Even possession is illegal.

I think I will pass.

I don't think most people who can afford a thousand dollars for a phone plan to keep their phone for longer than the 7 years Google will support their Pixel devices these days, nor do they want to buy a phone which has been out for very long. The poors will accept last year's iPhone, or an even older one, or the Shitty Edition bundled into their phone plan.

For a non-Pixel device you'd have a solid point, as most other Android phones have abysmally short support lifespans. Then again, many of those phones are so much cheaper you can buy one every three years...

It's partly end stage for a nearly dead country that causes us to have to talk about politics now.

But it's also partly because we didn't take politics seriously, and get involved enough in it. If we had discussed it a lot more sooner, maybe we wouldn't have to discuss it so much now.

Even if it could find the answer it might mess it up before it gave it to you. It might give you the right answer sometimes and not other times, especially if the right answer has changed...