Ab-so-fucking-lutely.

For a job that requires a lot of reminding people "that's not your laptop, that's the companies' laptop", a lot of people get awful invested in "their servers". Just let it go.

I know their business decision, however misguided, was very personal. Prove their mistake, which they will never know or care about, by moving on to the next job. Not by trying to be the sub-villain in a B-movie.

That feels like a very... hopeful interpretation. Instead of "In my expert opinion there is no non-malicious use of this component, and SysadminX was the only one with possible access."

Intent is not always necessary, it depends on the charges.

Computer Forensics isn't a new discipline at this point. People have literally gone to jail for putting in kill switches. It's possible SysadminX is actually smarter than teams of people that are dissecting what happened after they were fired and is a real life Keyser Soze, but it's extremely unlikely.

The Judge and Jury don't have to know how a kill switch works. The Judge and Jury have to believe the expert testimony that one was placed and caused damage.

Sam Bankman Freed didn't get jail time because the judge and jury understood the nuances of cryptocurrency and financial scams.

* Assuming there is no bug, zero-day, or other vulnerability on the current version of your fully updated device.

Having a power-only cable removes that as a possibility.

"Should" be in for a pricy repair bill.

Unfortunately there's a lot of precedent, up to and including loss of life, where the police "cannot be held accountable because it might impact their ability to do their duty in the future."

I mean that's everything. There isn't a "movie of the summer" anymore really, no I Love Lucy / Cheers / Friends / Simpsons that basically everyone is watching or familiar with. It's been true for longer with books/music because of the lower gateways to entry and being able to be a "local artist", but not by much, and even for them it's exploded since the Internet became mainstream.

The democratization of publication has dramatically broadened the type and quality of things being made and no industry titans really have figured out how to promote around that. At least not consistently.

"What if every star was a human soul?" is not an interesting astronomy question to get people into astronomy. "Big Astronomy" not awarding grants to study that, is not a conspiracy. It's due diligence.

Using a platform to say "What if [random speculation that has no basis and can't be tested]" is not useful science outreach. It's someone pretending to be science-y.

A person's sole redeeming aspect being "being an engaging speaker" doesn't make them a useful object lesson, it makes them yet another snake oil salesman. That's not new or unique. That's being a charlatan. Which is what people don't like about Graham.

Disney is also actively arguing in court that if you use the free trial you can't sue them for anything. Ever.

Even if years later you die in one of Disney's hotels because one of Disney's restaurants didn't care about your allergy.

So there's that to worry about now.

Perfect should not be the enemy of Good. Reforming the entire system is not something that just happens. It takes several steps in the right direction and you have to start somewhere.

Sovereign Citizens are basically a cargo cult. They think that finding the right legalese will work like a magic spell. If they can find the right combination of words, they'll get the outcome they desire.

The "only subject to contracts" thing is basically their belief that they are only bound by contracts they've agreed to, not things like the laws of the place they currently are. Hence doing something crazy like making a fake license plate and thinking that 'counts' because he's "issuing his own license" without the need to do silly things like take a driving test to use public roads.

Mostly I think its fine for all that.

But there's a special circle of hell for projects that rely on it for "documentation".

I get the temptation, I really do. But once you're taking money or have more than a couple people involved and semi-organized you really need at least a small wiki/git-hub landing page with the basics.

I know documentation is a separate skillset and a lot of work in its own right but projects can also stagnate and die because there isn't any.

It should be. But I would be extremely surprised if everything in the terms of service isn't worded something like "you're buying a license to view this content that can be revoked whenever".