What made all this worse was the fact that Der Spiegel was looked up to for (supposedly) having a solid team of fact-checkers.
As the medium post shows (and the magazine's own investigation afterwards) was that not even basic and publicly available info was checked, such as the percentage of pro-Trump voters, let alone the rest of the original article's hilariously ridiculous claims.
Another Der Spiegel reporter who was suspicious of Relotius tried raising his concerns with the management after he did some digging of his own, which almost cost him his job and reputation:
Der Spiegel enjoyed the profits of Relotius' fiction and peddled literal fake news to the world for years, and the magazine's readers lapped it all up because it reinforced their biases.
Similar issue in my country (Portugal). On our largest second-hand market (OLX.pt) the laptops in the 60-80 EUR range are pretty much all described as "for parts", and their specs are not comparable to this RPi model.
The snide comments like the GP's are due to them living in the american bubble.
EDIT: also note the comment you're replying to is using a traditional workstation "slab" as an example. I'd rather use a small RPi that frees up more desk space than buy something that will make my work environment at home even more cramped!
Jim Browning is another great channel related to this, in that he does his best to infiltrate the callcenters he gets calls from and find the info needed to alert (or even refund!) the victims:
While Kitboga's scambaits are definitely entertaining and a waste of the scammers' time, Jim seems to be doing the work that a police unit should be doing.
Around the time just before the MAX was grounded, I remember there being lots of unfounded speculations (here on HN as well!) that Lion Air's and Ethiopian's pilots were somehow substandard and lacking the training of their first world counterparts. Meanwhile it was Boeing actively keeping vital information and training from pilots.
The lesson from this is still not learned, and can see at least one apologist on this thread repeating this same BS again...it's infuriating.
I can't see how you think there's absolutely no connection here. The Chinese government has demonstrated very clearly it will coerce their citizens' compliance - they're not going to be immune to this just by not being activists.
If you have something they want - or are able to do something they want - it's quite obvious they will use your family as leverage.
That you find this scenario so fantastical is naive...and yes, the Chinese government openly threatening its own citizens abroad is documented. What do you think of the following article, is it cause for concern for you, or do you believe it's just our media misrepresenting China?
Blackmailing any random employee (with their family safely in the US or another western country) is absolutely not the same as blackmailing an employee with the family still living in China or Russia.
If you have family in China and you have access to government information or IP they want it is not at all far fetched they will do this.
Unfortunately I can no longer edit my reply - please take my apology for misunderstanding your argument.
Back on topic of green cards: whether you want to bury your head in the sand or face the reality that foreign dictatorships will use their own citizens to infiltrate their rivals is up to you. If you want to take the high road you can, and likely be excluded from government contract work.
Don't get me wrong on one thing, the west is in a precarious situation of openly doing the same thing in certain cases - eg: Australia's draconian backdoor law. I will not hire or recommend hiring an autralian dev working in Australia - and you can call me a racist or xenophobe if you want, it will not change the reason for the decision.
Fortunately for an australian immigrant abroad they are not going to have their family black-bagged for failure to submit to their government. I don't have this confidence for Russia, and especially not China.
You seem very focused on China only...why is that? GP's "musing" equally affects Russians. Or are Russians not something your ideology would allow you to defend?
Regardless, the GP does raise a valid point that if you have family living under the heel of a totalitarian dictatorship they can and will be used as leverage.
Your whinging won't change that fact, and it has nothing to do with them being Chinese (or Russian!), and everything to do with their country's government.
Chinese and Russians living outside of China and Russia will not be affected by the ban.
You keep calling it xenophobia even after you've been proven wrong when you claimed this is targetted at green-card holders. You are absolutely disengenuous and have no intention at good-faith discussion.