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This has been floating around now for about two days, and this is the first time I've seen any formal outlet cover the story other than Telegram channels and Tw

This has been floating around now for about two days, and this is the first time I've seen any formal outlet cover the story other than Telegram channels and Twitter aggregators. It's rather telling about the state of mainstream American media today. In any other country, revelations like this would be front page news and more or less a gigantic scandal. But in the USA, it's radio silence. Not even an attempted verification of the information leaked in an attempt to debunk it, which would have been a nice starting point at least. If you have a look through the pictures and leaks, there are some absolute shockers within it, and given that it's already spread like wildfire across the broader conservative side of the internet, I think it's certainly worth engaging with from the side of outlets like the New York Times and the like in a bare minimum effort to do something constructive.

gravitate 4y ago
4chan must be getting a lot of heat about this. It is, after all a crime to defame someone like this. As a technologist I want more technical details on the cracking techniques used. What tools were used? Also how did they source the iCloud backup? Tip off, or a brute force scan?
- james-redwood 4y ago
  Hunter Biden took his personal laptop in for repairs one day and just left it at the shop, never to return to collect it. The leaker is more or less an IT guy who found it hilarious to leak the contents of his laptop online. The most important development was that they managed to crack his iCloud password via files left on his computer.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
NicoJuicy 4y ago
There are a lot of foreign actors that would do a lot of try to hype such news. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-... If it's true of course. The laptop story literally seemed made up.
- hahaitsfunny 4y ago
- james-redwood 4y ago
  If you look at the torrent, it's almost 100% certain it's real. For me, his iCloud pictures seal the deal in terms of legitimacy. It would be a very elaborate scheme to fake all of those. Of course, deepfaking is still a hypothesis that to my knowledge has not been ruled out.
  - ksaj 4y ago
    I don't think anyone is saying it is 100% fake. But heavily tampered and manipulated, absolutely plausible. Remember the emails that got everyone believing there was a pedo ring running under that pizza joint? Ends up there is no "under" in that pizza joint, let alone the rest of the story. Those were real emails from a real leak, but they were heavily tampered with. There has been a couple of years to tamper with this laptop and online access already. EDIT: Looks like there has already been a lot of work put into faking "evidence" in re: Hunter's laptop. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hunter-biden-melania-trump-photo/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hunter-biden-melania-trump...
    - dukeofdoom 4y ago
      Keep in mind that faking evidence could also be done to benefit Hunter. If you mix in fake images into these leaks so that later they get disproved as fake, people will be more likely question the legitimacy of the real ones. Throwing people of the right track is like almost universal theme in detective novels. As a thought experiment, imagine some cheating was done using fake signatures during the last election. If you plant and broadly circulate stories of voting machines being hacked, so that everyone pays attention to voting machines, only to later disprove that they were hacked. You've successfully managed to misdirect public opinion when it mattered the most.
      - TechBro8615 4y ago

gravitate 4y ago

4chan must be getting a lot of heat about this. It is, after all a crime to defame someone like this. As a technologist I want more technical details on the cracking techniques used. What tools were used? Also how did they source the iCloud backup? Tip off, or a brute force scan?

james-redwood 4y ago
Hunter Biden took his personal laptop in for repairs one day and just left it at the shop, never to return to collect it. The leaker is more or less an IT guy who found it hilarious to leak the contents of his laptop online. The most important development was that they managed to crack his iCloud password via files left on his computer.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

NicoJuicy 4y ago

There are a lot of foreign actors that would do a lot of try to hype such news. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-... If it's true of course. The laptop story literally seemed made up.

hahaitsfunny 4y ago
james-redwood 4y ago
If you look at the torrent, it's almost 100% certain it's real. For me, his iCloud pictures seal the deal in terms of legitimacy. It would be a very elaborate scheme to fake all of those. Of course, deepfaking is still a hypothesis that to my knowledge has not been ruled out.
- ksaj 4y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying it is 100% fake. But heavily tampered and manipulated, absolutely plausible. Remember the emails that got everyone believing there was a pedo ring running under that pizza joint? Ends up there is no "under" in that pizza joint, let alone the rest of the story. Those were real emails from a real leak, but they were heavily tampered with. There has been a couple of years to tamper with this laptop and online access already. EDIT: Looks like there has already been a lot of work put into faking "evidence" in re: Hunter's laptop. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hunter-biden-melania-trump-photo/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hunter-biden-melania-trump...
  - dukeofdoom 4y ago
    Keep in mind that faking evidence could also be done to benefit Hunter. If you mix in fake images into these leaks so that later they get disproved as fake, people will be more likely question the legitimacy of the real ones. Throwing people of the right track is like almost universal theme in detective novels. As a thought experiment, imagine some cheating was done using fake signatures during the last election. If you plant and broadly circulate stories of voting machines being hacked, so that everyone pays attention to voting machines, only to later disprove that they were hacked. You've successfully managed to misdirect public opinion when it mattered the most.
    - TechBro8615 4y ago