Be the change you want to see in the world.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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There's a reason Mr Robot is still incredibly popular
That, and because it's at least moderately accurate to how actual infosec breaches work
"Fight club for nerds afraid to get punched" is my favorite description, even tho Elliot routinely gets his ass beat.
closest thing we had to it was arrested in a Mcdonalds because some dumbass making less than 12 dollars and hour dropped a dime on him.
Can't have robin hood without some class solidarity.
Luigi is innocent, we were playing videogames together
And I don’t think they even got the reward money the feds claimed they’d give out for turning him in but I’m not sure.
They did not
He really shouldn't have stopped in Allentown. That's the redneck meth capital of PA.
I thought I read somewhere that they actually used face rec and CCTV, but leaked that it was a call-in tip to obfuscate the extent of the surveillance state from the public?
I mean, I don't doubt that honestly, makes a lot more sense to me especially since they never got any reward money.
Also could of been a way to "legalize" the illegally obtained facial recognition, or some other form of illegal intelligence gathering.
because some dumbass making less than 12 dollars and hour dropped a dime on him.
You really should learn about how that actually happened...
Because it's most likely going to be how the case gets thrown out. If you care about it, I don't know why anyone would willing stay ignorant
Less hints more links my guy! Strong "parallel construction" vibes but I haven't seen anything real solid yet and like to think I'm reasonably tuned in
Literally the first link from searching "luigi McDonald's"
Authorities said a customer in the restaurant thought he matched the description of the suspect in Thompson's killing and notified an employee, who called 911.
https://www.newsweek.com/mcdonalds-worker-luigi-mangione-private-security-1999217
That customer was almost certainly law enforcement, they just needed a scapegoat to call in the tip because they couldn't say how they found him.
The McDonald's worker had no idea, that's why their call was basically: "some guy said another guy is dangerous and wanted by police, I don't know who".
And cops immediately swarmed and singled out Luigi.
You may believe you're "reasonably tuned in" but this information was out within like 24 hrs of his arrest everywhere.
That link says absolutely nothing about the source of the "tip", you're kinda being a prick about this without providing the substance that makes people put up with that. We're even on the same side of this very specific niche case and you put more effort into some weak dunks than sharing info and downvoted me. Fuck off dude
That link says absolutely nothing about the source of the “tip"
Because it originated from an anonymous source...
Someone that was aware of who Luigi is and the bounty, wanted to turn him in...
But didn't take the two seconds to ensure a call was made, instead they told someone else to call and just left.
Bro, if you can't logic this out, and you only want help when it's sugar coated...
Just block me.
Otherwise I'm cool to keep answering you're questions, but this is standard delivery.
We've come to similar conclusions, I asked for a link because the confidence of your presentation made me think you had a good source. Instead of arming me with evidence, all this conversation has provided is arrogant, childish abuse. If you had something worth sharing you could just share it, "bro"
And modern day guillotine while at it.
The neat thing is that guillotine technology has advanced quite far since the French revolution
I need to rewatch Tucker and Dale vs Evil.
That movie really is special
We had one, his name was Aaron Swartz.
He did great work, had awesome projects. But he pissed off some of the powers that be, and they decided to litigate. They did what they could to crush him and it worked. Ultimately he committed suicide in prison.
I think we never deserved him and he knew it.
Now I think the best we have is Cory Doctorow, but he's more of an open source tech evangelist than a hacker. He's fighting the good fight, but not by building things.
pretty much the plot of mr. robot
I really hate that the exaggerated future of Watchdogs is becoming reality but not the exaggerated group of highly experienced black hat hackers doing crazy post compromise shenanigans that would make national news.
The problem is the same reason why a Robin Hood type of character already doesn't really exist in modern history. There will always be thousands of highly skilled people in defense of the very system you wish to see dissolved.
You would need the resources of at least a highly advanced APT, which often means you're funded by a nation state which has very specific compromise goals.
Everyone else falls into cybercrime, which is much less sophisticated and is almost always after money.
Hence why most highly publicized attacks end in bitcoin ransoms.
EDIT:
Also at the risk of giving too much info about my career, big banks are absolutely notorious for having extremely tight security. Even if you managed to jump over the custom EDR, pivot your way through a massive amount of proprietary systems, and land in a suitable position to carry out the motherload of a supply chain attack, the bank could just halt their infrastructure and manually nullify whatever transactions they want with full backing from the government.
The closest I ever hypothetically witnessed was being able to manipulate the loan data for a small credit union. And emphasis on hypothetical, a real attacker would have needed some hard internal access to a heavily restricted subnet.
The only way I can see this successfully happening is like if the Chief Network Architect of say Chase also happened to be a highly competent hacker who uses his decades of experience to formulate a plan with an APT over the course of several years.
I really hate that the exaggerated future of Watchdogs is becoming reality but not the exaggerated group of highly experienced black hat hackers doing crazy post compromise shenanigans that would make national news.
The problem is the same reason why a Robin Hood type of character already doesn't really exist in modern history.
Huh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec
As someone who has also been all up inside bank infrastructure I can agree with the rest of your post, the complexity to access some of those proprietary boxes would almost not be worth it, especially with things like offsite backups.
Yeah I know about them, and they were actually the inspiration for Dedsec in Watchdogs, but they shuttered after the FBI caught one and flipped him real quick lol.
I could be wrong, but I don't think we ever really saw a group like LulzSec again with the same level of notoriety and success.
Fuck Sabu, all my homies hate Sabu
That's fair, as you said most are smashed these days by capitalism and thus focus on ransomware.
The thing is if a group wanted to remain in operation, being public is against their own interest. Back then it was easier to get away with things. Cloudflare wasn't as advanced/heavily utilized, load balancers weren't considered and lots of old architecture riddled with vulns made things fun. Web security was also extremely poor via xss.
We need to not expect some hero figure to appear and change our world for us.
Having worked with highly regulated industries like banking, health care, and others that a “Robin Hood” hacker would target I can say that it’s not feasible.
Do you know how many days of Zoom meetings they’d have to be on to compromise just one system?
That's management. The actual physical RFID card generator is on an employee's Windows laptop with the password sticky noted on the screen.
Okay so now you’re in one system in one company. And that person still needs approval and a four hour zoom call to push anything into a position where it can make a difference.
I know, I’ve been on dozens of calls like that.
And even then you’ve pwned one of about a dozen companies you’d need to make a dent.
And then some dickhole will rat you out to the FBI for leniency.
And that person still needs approval and a four hour zoom call to push anything into a position where it can make a difference.
You don't need approval when you are a criminal and have used exploits to gain root access to the company's computers.
You think Aaron Swartz was on Zoom meetings to get approval before picking the lock to the network closet, hacking root and downloading all the University's public research papers?
You think ShinyHunters are on Zoom meetings asking for approval? https://cybernews.com/security/software-11m-students-hacked-shinyhunters-attack/
This is you:
"No one can rob a bank. Think of the meetings needed to get HR to approve bringing a gun in the building."
Downloading a bunch of data from educational systems is significantly easier than getting exploits into banks and financial systems, which is what I assumed a Robin Hood hacker would be doing.
Banks are hacked too:
edit:
In one episode of Mr Robot, they setup a fake cell tower and steal sims to bypass the 2 factor authentication on the cell phone of the people they stole from.
This actually happens in the real world: https://apnews.com/article/fraud-identity-theft-fcc-wireless-providers-8df930f2983d589c4822bba53eedfc1b
Again no Zoom meetings about stealing the SIM in your cell phone.
Another data theft, which is not what people envision when they think “Robin Hood.”
They’re picturing a Mr. Robot-like restructuring of the financial system, or even just eliminating debt like was proposed in Sneakers, or maybe just moving money around like that one episode of SeaQuest with Tim Russ.
And to do that you need a lot of people to get code anywhere near production, and everything is audited, and the timelines are measured in quarters.
And then you need to do it for the rest of the banks in the system. Mr Robot only worked because Ecorp was a monopoly.
Or they could just ransomware the money from the big companies and give it away
I guess if you’re okay with getting caught
They exist, but they're also are on 4chan, so it's a wash.
You know how hard it is to hack with bow and arrow?
https://gamerant.com/hawkeye-best-trick-arrows-from-comics-mcu/
There are tons, op. Getting ahold of a corporate card and ordering strangers (maybe you're one of them, maybe you aren't) presents is a classic for a reason. You just never hear about victories of the resistance, that's kinda propaganda 101
I was just thinking about all the industrial spying China has done over the years. Would be awful if someone released their secrets for battery tech in their cars (if they actually exist).
Or billions of studies being hosted on torrent sites, oh the misery of publishers
We already kinda do.