> they're not among any I've ever known You just met one. In the mid 90s, when I was writing firmware and drivers for HIPPI[1] networking equipment, the Malays

> they're not among any I've ever known You just met one. In the mid 90s, when I was writing firmware and drivers for HIPPI[1] networking equipment, the Malaysian government bought a bunch of out hardware (indirectly), as part of a big system that was supposed to receive a bunch of TV channels from satellite, buffer it for a couple minutes on disk, and then re-broadcast the streams on local TV channels. The buffer, of course, allowed for the "live" TV streams to be censored on the fly. This was before flash was cheap an ubiquitous, so the firmware for the FPGAs was on a socketed EEPROM. Changing the firmware required removing the chip and a computer with PROM programmer hardware. Bugs happened[2], and my boss decided I needed to make "our biggest customer" happy by flying to Malaysia with an --undeclared-- bag of EEPROMs with better firmware and personally updating their hardware. It was my first "real" job, but I was still 3 more years of classes away from my bachelors, so I was getting crap intern wages of $11/hr. When I started to suggest I didn't really want to smuggle chips into an notoriously authoritarian state to help them censor their TV, my boss immediately offered me a 6-figure salary and a $60,000 cash bonus. I was seriously tempted. Instead, I gave them my 2-weeks notice the next day... (side note: a few years earlier, the NSA offered me a full 4-year scholarship (inc. housing and cash stipend), but the "you just need to work for us for 150% time (6-years) after you graduate" price tag made that offer a lot easier to turn down) [1] https://hsi.web.cern.ch/HSI/hippi/procintf/pcihippi/pcihipde.htm https://hsi.web.cern.ch/HSI/hippi/procintf/pcihippi/pcihipde... [2] actually, it turns out our PCI interface chip was faulty[3] [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10609033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10609033