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The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To th

The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it." [1]. Then, it gets passed off to Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani back at the start of the year when Guiliani is already trying to get Ukraine to stir up a story on Hunter Biden. They then sit on it for most of the year and release it 20 days before the election. Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk. Meanwhile, people are literally in lines voting and stuff like this has an effect. That's probably why it was released right now, because even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done. [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...

zalkota 6y ago
Did you see the photos?
barnesto 6y ago
Doesn't matter if the story reeks or not. This is about censorship and even application of "community standards." Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign. Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google it. And Hunter Biden is an admitted drug addict. So nothing that has been exposed from that laptop reeks too much. You want to say Hunter was set up? Okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole, but to say this is all false? Well, again, your bias is showing.
- koolba 6y ago
  > Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign. Of course not. It's selective interference. They're just getting more brazen about it as we get closer to election day. Also telling is that they have a pinned story at the top of the empty search page with the link titled, "Joe Biden did not push out a Ukrainian prosecutor for investigating his son, The Washington Post reports" EDIT: Here's a link showing the WaPo headline that Twitter is adding: https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632 https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632
  - convery 6y ago
    Worth noting is that WP have officially endorsed Biden.
    - koolba 6y ago
      I'm sure nobody saw that coming!
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  You don't get to jump up and down and claim that corporations should have the same rights as citizens and then turn around and say they don't have a right to control what they own.
wwright 6y ago
Literally the same thing that happened with the FBI announcing that they were "reopening" the Clinton investigation right before the election and then promptly deciding that they found nothing afterwards.
- taxicab 6y ago
  History might not repeat, but it does rhyme.
throwawayay02 6y ago
So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? To censor the U.S. House Judiciary Committee? I mean all parties hold their hot stories to close to the election for the greatest impact, but Twitter is certainly not even trying to appear partisan at this moment. It's quite clear this is not "hacked information", and if it wore, then it would be also an admission of guilt from Hunter Biden.
- wwright 6y ago
  > So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? Frankly, they should do this much more when officials lie (which the current administration has demonstrably done ad infinitum for four years). There's no reason at all for them to help officials lie about important matters. As a private platform, it's certainly a matter of whether or not they are helping you do something rather than whether or not they are preventing you from doing something. If we want a reliable avenue for public communication, Silicon Valley ain't gonna give it to us, and they shouldn't. It would be another thing to prevent people from stating that someone else had said something (given that the statement did actually happen). Sometimes, Twitter does block all posts that even mention a topic. This is definitely a bad approach, and I think they do tend to rectify it when this happens, but they still screw it up pretty often.
- iaw 6y ago
  I think we're seeing Twitter and Facebook draw a line in the sand about behaviors that cause damage. Note that Twitter and Facebook removed comments hoping for the worst when the president was diagnosed with Covid which they hadn't done for AOC or other liberals who were receiving death threats. Things are changing, I don't think we can point to prior behavior of these companies as the line they're going to hold in the future.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  > It’s quite clear this is not “hacked information” Setting aside the speculation at the end, this summarizes the issues with the story: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/suspect-provenance-of-hunter-biden-data-cache-prompts-skepticism-and-social-media-bans/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/suspect-provenance-of-hunt...
goodluckchuck 6y ago
> Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk. It's hard to learn when you've already made up your mind.
naiveprogrammer 6y ago
The media has been pedaling the Russian collusion story for 4 years and you don't seem to care because it fits your priors and political agenda. The bigger lesson here is that everybody is ready to accept censorship as long as they are not bearing the (immediate) costs of it.
- wwright 6y ago
  Well, multiple members of the Trump campaign have literally pleaded guilty to lying about involvement with Russia; that story does have that going for it :)
  - zalkota 6y ago
    You sir are the problem.
    - messick 6y ago
      Lol. Although I guess that’s true in a “not letting Trumpers forget he is a Russian stooge” kind of sense.
      - dang 6y ago
        Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. We're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Telling the truth is a problem? What times we live in!
      - dang 6y ago
        Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. They're tedious and we're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
orangecat 6y ago
Yes, it's sketchy. I'd rate it as slightly more plausible than the gang rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, which Twitter had no problem with.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  Unlike the Kavanaugh accusations, no one has yet testified under oath to Congress to any of this.
cowmoo728 6y ago
A modern macbook pro has a T2 security chip and disk encryption on by default. It's possible that a random repair shop owner could read your emails if you turn off disk encryption or disable password auth, but that's even more far fetched. edited It seems this particular mac doesn't have the T2 chip. It would still have disk encryption on by default.
- stvswn 6y ago
  I thought of this. The serial number of the laptop is included in the grand jury summons docs released by the New York Post. The serial number can be used to lookup the model. It was a mid-2017 macbook pro, the T2 chip started shipping in 2018 models.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jedimastert 6y ago
> even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done. "A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." — Mark Twain
jungletime 6y ago
Probably an FBI agent that dropped it off. Could even be a copy of the one they have. There's a lot of people that would be motivated to leak something like this, especially since Trump got impeached over this. Anyway, would not invalidate the story, just because of the way it was leaked.
verroq 6y ago
And it is Twitter and Facebook’s role to censor it? I don’t remember appointing these guys are the official fact-checkers.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
1. That the FBI subpoenaed the laptop is sort of interesting. That usually requires a grand jury, doesn't it? But this is really weird: >During the subsequent summer and fall, Mac Isaac said he became alarmed after browsing through the computer's files. He claims he then spoke with an associate more versed than him in the law and in current events. >That unnamed person then contacted the FBI, Mac Isaac said. >Federal investigators from Wilmington and Baltimore then subpoenaed the laptop in December, Mac Isaac said. >Shortly after, they called Mac Isaac asking him to assist them, technically, in viewing the files on the damaged hard drive, he said. >Mac Isaac admitted that the request raised his own suspicion, given that the FBI has its own technical staff. 2. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing a reputable shop would be doing with someone's property (poking around inside, sending it to Giuliani). Could it have violated the law? 3. The stories tell what we already knew: Hunter tried to cash in on his dad, while living the loser life of an addict. Won't change my vote.
- sg47 6y ago
  Racists will do what they are wont to do.
  - jonnycomputer 6y ago
    racists?
    - dennnis 6y ago
      lol the world we are in now...
      - jonnycomputer 6y ago
        I honestly was just trying to understand what the person was trying to get across.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago
  And, soon after: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-examining-if-alleged-hunter-biden-emails-are-linked-foreign-n1243620?cid=eml_nbn_20201015 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-exam... >Federal investigators are examining whether the emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News. The story is light on details.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
An "October surprise". A time-honored tradition in US presidential elections. Done by both sides. In the past, covered by all major news outlets. Now if Twitter wants to not allow tweeting of October surprises, I suppose that's their business. But if so, block it for both sides. I also think it's totally counterproductive for them to (try to) do so. Block links to the NY Post article? Great, but then what? Block links to the BBC article? To the HN discussion? To every random blogger who writes up a post about it, with links to the BBC article, the NY Post article, and the HN discussion? Twitter might be able to stay on top of that, but it's going to be hard, it's going to leak, and it's going to look really bad. It's going to give the story far more legs than it otherwise would have had (Streisand effect). It's going to spawn a whole bunch of new conspiracy theories, with Twitter as part of the bad guys. The net effect of all this is not going to be what Twitter wants...
fareesh 6y ago
1) Ad hominem 2) Conspiracy theory 3) Lie by omission (it was sent to the FBI in December, he sent a copy to Giuliani) Your debunking is objectively poor
fareesh 6y ago
Giuliani says they have a receipt with Hunter's signature on it Hunter's lawyer has allegedly emailed the store asking for the laptop back If those two things can be corroborated and they aren't forgeries, it should dispel all speculation about who dropped it off and who it belonged to.

zalkota 6y ago

Did you see the photos?

barnesto 6y ago

Doesn't matter if the story reeks or not. This is about censorship and even application of "community standards." Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign. Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google it. And Hunter Biden is an admitted drug addict. So nothing that has been exposed from that laptop reeks too much. You want to say Hunter was set up? Okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole, but to say this is all false? Well, again, your bias is showing.

koolba 6y ago
> Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign. Of course not. It's selective interference. They're just getting more brazen about it as we get closer to election day. Also telling is that they have a pinned story at the top of the empty search page with the link titled, "Joe Biden did not push out a Ukrainian prosecutor for investigating his son, The Washington Post reports" EDIT: Here's a link showing the WaPo headline that Twitter is adding: https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632 https://twitter.com/RepLeeZeldin/status/1316523575373893632
- convery 6y ago
  Worth noting is that WP have officially endorsed Biden.
  - koolba 6y ago
    I'm sure nobody saw that coming!
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
You don't get to jump up and down and claim that corporations should have the same rights as citizens and then turn around and say they don't have a right to control what they own.

wwright 6y ago

Literally the same thing that happened with the FBI announcing that they were "reopening" the Clinton investigation right before the election and then promptly deciding that they found nothing afterwards.

taxicab 6y ago
History might not repeat, but it does rhyme.

throwawayay02 6y ago

So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? To censor the U.S. House Judiciary Committee? I mean all parties hold their hot stories to close to the election for the greatest impact, but Twitter is certainly not even trying to appear partisan at this moment. It's quite clear this is not "hacked information", and if it wore, then it would be also an admission of guilt from Hunter Biden.

wwright 6y ago
> So? Other fake stories are certainly not censored in this manner. To demand the White House press secretary delete a tweet? Frankly, they should do this much more when officials lie (which the current administration has demonstrably done ad infinitum for four years). There's no reason at all for them to help officials lie about important matters. As a private platform, it's certainly a matter of whether or not they are helping you do something rather than whether or not they are preventing you from doing something. If we want a reliable avenue for public communication, Silicon Valley ain't gonna give it to us, and they shouldn't. It would be another thing to prevent people from stating that someone else had said something (given that the statement did actually happen). Sometimes, Twitter does block all posts that even mention a topic. This is definitely a bad approach, and I think they do tend to rectify it when this happens, but they still screw it up pretty often.
iaw 6y ago
I think we're seeing Twitter and Facebook draw a line in the sand about behaviors that cause damage. Note that Twitter and Facebook removed comments hoping for the worst when the president was diagnosed with Covid which they hadn't done for AOC or other liberals who were receiving death threats. Things are changing, I don't think we can point to prior behavior of these companies as the line they're going to hold in the future.
zaptrem 6y ago
> It’s quite clear this is not “hacked information” Setting aside the speculation at the end, this summarizes the issues with the story: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/suspect-provenance-of-hunter-biden-data-cache-prompts-skepticism-and-social-media-bans/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/suspect-provenance-of-hunt...

goodluckchuck 6y ago

> Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk. It's hard to learn when you've already made up your mind.

naiveprogrammer 6y ago

The media has been pedaling the Russian collusion story for 4 years and you don't seem to care because it fits your priors and political agenda. The bigger lesson here is that everybody is ready to accept censorship as long as they are not bearing the (immediate) costs of it.

wwright 6y ago
Well, multiple members of the Trump campaign have literally pleaded guilty to lying about involvement with Russia; that story does have that going for it :)
- zalkota 6y ago
  You sir are the problem.
  - messick 6y ago
    Lol. Although I guess that’s true in a “not letting Trumpers forget he is a Russian stooge” kind of sense.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. We're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Telling the truth is a problem? What times we live in!
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. They're tedious and we're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

orangecat 6y ago

Yes, it's sketchy. I'd rate it as slightly more plausible than the gang rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, which Twitter had no problem with.

tomjakubowski 6y ago
Unlike the Kavanaugh accusations, no one has yet testified under oath to Congress to any of this.

cowmoo728 6y ago

A modern macbook pro has a T2 security chip and disk encryption on by default. It's possible that a random repair shop owner could read your emails if you turn off disk encryption or disable password auth, but that's even more far fetched. edited It seems this particular mac doesn't have the T2 chip. It would still have disk encryption on by default.

stvswn 6y ago
I thought of this. The serial number of the laptop is included in the grand jury summons docs released by the New York Post. The serial number can be used to lookup the model. It was a mid-2017 macbook pro, the T2 chip started shipping in 2018 models.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jedimastert 6y ago

> even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done. "A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots." — Mark Twain

jungletime 6y ago

Probably an FBI agent that dropped it off. Could even be a copy of the one they have. There's a lot of people that would be motivated to leak something like this, especially since Trump got impeached over this. Anyway, would not invalidate the story, just because of the way it was leaked.

verroq 6y ago

And it is Twitter and Facebook’s role to censor it? I don’t remember appointing these guys are the official fact-checkers.

jonnycomputer 6y ago

1. That the FBI subpoenaed the laptop is sort of interesting. That usually requires a grand jury, doesn't it? But this is really weird: >During the subsequent summer and fall, Mac Isaac said he became alarmed after browsing through the computer's files. He claims he then spoke with an associate more versed than him in the law and in current events. >That unnamed person then contacted the FBI, Mac Isaac said. >Federal investigators from Wilmington and Baltimore then subpoenaed the laptop in December, Mac Isaac said. >Shortly after, they called Mac Isaac asking him to assist them, technically, in viewing the files on the damaged hard drive, he said. >Mac Isaac admitted that the request raised his own suspicion, given that the FBI has its own technical staff. 2. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing a reputable shop would be doing with someone's property (poking around inside, sending it to Giuliani). Could it have violated the law? 3. The stories tell what we already knew: Hunter tried to cash in on his dad, while living the loser life of an addict. Won't change my vote.

sg47 6y ago
Racists will do what they are wont to do.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago
  racists?
  - dennnis 6y ago
    lol the world we are in now...
    - jonnycomputer 6y ago
      I honestly was just trying to understand what the person was trying to get across.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
And, soon after: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-examining-if-alleged-hunter-biden-emails-are-linked-foreign-n1243620?cid=eml_nbn_20201015 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/feds-exam... >Federal investigators are examining whether the emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News. The story is light on details.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

An "October surprise". A time-honored tradition in US presidential elections. Done by both sides. In the past, covered by all major news outlets. Now if Twitter wants to not allow tweeting of October surprises, I suppose that's their business. But if so, block it for both sides. I also think it's totally counterproductive for them to (try to) do so. Block links to the NY Post article? Great, but then what? Block links to the BBC article? To the HN discussion? To every random blogger who writes up a post about it, with links to the BBC article, the NY Post article, and the HN discussion? Twitter might be able to stay on top of that, but it's going to be hard, it's going to leak, and it's going to look really bad. It's going to give the story far more legs than it otherwise would have had (Streisand effect). It's going to spawn a whole bunch of new conspiracy theories, with Twitter as part of the bad guys. The net effect of all this is not going to be what Twitter wants...

fareesh 6y ago

1) Ad hominem 2) Conspiracy theory 3) Lie by omission (it was sent to the FBI in December, he sent a copy to Giuliani) Your debunking is objectively poor

fareesh 6y ago

Giuliani says they have a receipt with Hunter's signature on it Hunter's lawyer has allegedly emailed the store asking for the laptop back If those two things can be corroborated and they aren't forgeries, it should dispel all speculation about who dropped it off and who it belonged to.