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It’s been known since at least the 90s that it’s really hard to fully anonymize patient records. You can’t be certain but you can infer probabilities from very little information.

For anyone who disagrees with this statement there’s been a lot of research done in the area.

In the US at least owning a residence is public record. It can be obfuscated with shell companies and things like that but most people don’t do.

Mini-celebrities are probably far more likely to attract attention than a lot of “rich people.”

And if you do have a big pile of money but are flying under the radar so far you sadly should have some investments in security. I thought people around here didn’t really believe in security through obscurity.

Lets keep with the analogy, as wrong as it is. If you discover a serious bug, you usually disclose it privately, allowing the maintainers to patch the problem before disclosing. When the embargo is over, the bug is already harmless. Why we do that? Isn't that security through obscurity? Why we consider unethical to just disclose serious zero day bugs that might even get someone killed, or thousand of script kiddies that would never discover the bug on their own can profit from it easily?

Security through obscurity actually works in real life. There are lots of people that hide all their lives in a humble way, only to get discovered as millionaires after they die. Because you don't have hundred, thousands of bots looking for "vulnerabilities" on everyone's life at almost zero cost and big potential profit.


Who says he has the money? Even if he really is who they say he is, why do you think he actually has that money? It hasn't moved since it was made, it was probably casually lost during testing and will never be recovered by anybody, meaning it basically doesn't exist at all.

How is it different from all the non-secret billionaires to say nothing of all the people with 100s of millions?

You really dont get it? Because real billionares have the money and you dont.

Journalists just told everyone you are billionare, but you're just average SWE on $120k / year and absolutely no money for hiring small army of guards. Neither your own government agencies keep your back protected like they do for usual high profile people.

Now go find a proof for mafia that you are not in fact have a billion bucks on USD stick.

This has happened in this Satoshi hunt multiple times already. I mean finding that some random crypto related SWE is Satoshi when they are not.


> you're just average SWE on $120k / year and absolutely no money for hiring small army of guards

FWIW, in this instance Adam Back is also a non-secret billionaire, mostly from his public involvement in a number of ventures within the Bitcoin ecosystem. The difference is closer to 1 order of magnitude than the 4 you're proposing.


Satoshi is a paper billionaire - he can't use a small fraction of his "wealth" to hire proper security. Simultaneously his "assets" are much more attractive to criminals. Imagine holding a regular billionaire hostage and demanding they give you a billion dollars. They'd probably have to sell 1B worth of stock, then convert it to cash (or crypto), etc. all of that requiring multiple interactions with different people and institutions.

Heisting multiple billions worth of crypto would have the same issues, just to a smaller degree. If that much illicit money is on the line, `mJurisdiction` which normally looks the other way might be tempted to investigate and confiscate it for their own benefit.

They also can't easily sell that amount quickly without repercussions (and without another institution like an exchange).

You're right, but only to a limited degree.


Even if you put a gun to Bill Gates' head, signing over all his wealth to you would still require a lengthy process, not just handing over some keys.

Historically, people got a big book every year with the name and address of most people in it. You could get unlisted numbers but now everyone has a cellphone which just isn’t broadly published but because now many use it for everything it’s probably not that hard to find.

Also, has others have noted it’s trivial to put other a list of wealthy people. In fact, it’s probably better to skip the Forbes 400 list who probably have some level of private security. Just go through the board member lists of Fortune 500 companies.


In general use though slack has an even stronger connotation of e.g. slacking off and not doing anything useful with the time.

Alternatively, ensuring you have enough slack in the schedule is, at least for some tech leads and project managers, an essential tool to enable meeting deadlines.

(So, I suppose using "slack" in a positive sense by project management, while probably still being considered a pejorative thing by non technical management or beancounters...)


yep, having some slack is the only way for someone / something to able to respond to uncertainty. technically having firefighter on standby and policemen on patrol are a form of slacking, and we (should) have no problem with that.

Hadn’t been to a Kubecon in about a year as I’ve been tending to go to just the European ones. I definitely felt a much stronger this is real vibe at this event from people like Greg KH.

I dare say that he has access to at least some libraries that a random person can’t just breeze into.

I’ve been trying a bit of an experiment on my current trip and I’m still skeptical about iPad plus Magic Keyboard. Better than alternatives but still so-so. I think I’ll go back to my 10+ year old MacBook Pro but unless something really changes I’ll just pick up an Air for traveling at some point.

I switched to using my iPad Pro M5 + Magic Keyboard nearly full time. I use it for literally everything and also have it connected to an external monitor.

The only asterisk is that I also own a Mac Mini but I keep it attached running headlessly to my router and access it from the iPad via Jump Desktop and only use it exclusively for dev work (I only use a single external monitor anyway even with a normal Mac) or if I really need Chrome occasionally. But macOS used in that way feels almost native to the iPad.

Prior to this I was looking at an MBP and selling the iPad but this has convinced me to stay with it for the time being and maybe just upgrade the mac mini to a studio instead and continue to use it remotely.

People hate on it but so far I've been using it this way and it really feels next gen to the point that using a Macbook with macOS vs. the iPP + iPadOS feels genuinely archaic. With the latest iPadOS beta too things have gotten better on the Safari from as well and tabs no longer refresh as aggressively (though it's not perfect still).

Not to mention the significantly higher amount of security with iPadOS and AppleCare benefits (specifically theft protection) that comes with this setup.

If Android desktop mode improves a bit more and the Motorola devices for GOS next year look good then it wouldn't be inconceivable that I could drop my devices from 3 to 2 and not need a proper PC or Mac at all.


Certainly the Magic Keyboard is way better than any alternatives I’ve seen. Have tried to give it a good shot but maybe just haven’t tried hard enough and default back to what I’m used to.

When I get home need to ponder a bit more because some gear is very old or was declared to be unsalvageable after smoke damage from a kitchen fire.


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