Guess where Mr. Pecker is hosting! https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680
Yeah why wouldn't he just pull the plug on them? I know I would.
No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
411–420 of 783 posts
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think another interesting thing about these times, compared to when such things may have happened 20+ years ago, is that the photos they've described would cause rather little outrage or attract much beyond a few giggles from the public. Especially if released after their existence is already known about. I think the iCloud leaks of 2014 severely tempered society's salacious demand for more pictures of this nature.
Probably more to do with the fact that there's so much high quality porn on the internet that we're honestly desensitized to amateur quality celeb nudes. Briefly intriguing, but overall rather "meh?" Granted, I could just be projecting, but I don't think I'm alone here.
I think I speak for the majority of humanity when I say I have zero desire to see Jeff Bezos’ package. There’s a reason tabloids stick to celebrities.
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#413It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…
If the CEO and Founder of AWS can be easily hacked by Saudis then what does that mean for the rest of silicon valley in general and 99% of YC funded startups who rely on AWS?
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#414I believe people on this thread are viewing this thing in a specific way, and that there are other ways to consider this. 1) I suggest this is not blackmail in the legal sense. AMI, whatever they are - are not idiots. AMI probably knows better than any company in the world what is going to constitute 'newsworthy' items, at least in the legal sense. To suggest they would do something blatantly illegal and criminal in…
> 1) I suggest this is not blackmail in the legal sense. AMI, whatever they are - are not idiots. AMI probably knows better than any company in the world what is going to constitute 'newsworthy' items, at least in the legal sense. To suggest they would do something blatantly illegal and criminal in an email of all things ... I think does not make sense.
> They do this sort of thing for a living.
...and have been caught before: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/12/national-enq...
I really think you give them too much credit. This is a publication known to operate somewhere on the spectrum between shady and illegal. This latest development fits the picture perfectly.
> 2) This is a back room deal, a pretty normal one. They are asking Bezos to state: "have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces."
“Asking“. If it is just a normal deal, not amounting to extortion, and I disagree with that, it‘s off the table now. After Bezos‘ letter a statement anywhere close to or resembling what AMI is asking is now meaningless.
> 3) If those pics are published, the 'courage' of Bezos' ostensible principled stance are not going to be rewarded. The #1 thing Bezos will be known for, for at least a decade are his 'dick picks' and that he was 'cheating on his wife and kids'.
Maybe 20 years ago. In today’s climate this story hardly fills a full news cycle. Furthermore sexting probably doesn’t lead to the same public shock and outrage it might have decades or just years ago, as it’s pretty much become a relatable thing large parts of the population have taking part in at some points in their life. It’s rather tame by today’s standards, where presidents fuck porn stars while their third(?) wife cares for the newborn and Jefrey Epstein gets a slap on the wrist for molesting and raping hundreds of children: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html
> 4) I respect his choice - but - he has a company to worry about. If this blows up, and it starts to affect his 'perceived credibility' - what is he going to tell his board? He had a 'truce agreement' on the table which seemed ostensibly reasonable (assuming Bezos doesn't have some crazy evidence that he really needs to provide the feds?). The pragmatic choice would have been to make a truce with his warring entities.
Playing along with AMI‘s demands is what actually would have affected Bezos‘ and The Post‘s credibility. His choice, even if bold, is the natural and obvious option. Frankly, I don‘t know what AMI was thinking.
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#415It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…
Which makes stories like this a lot more interesting: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mby7kq/malware-to... > Saudi Arabia paid $55 million to purchase iPhone malware made by NSO Group, according to a recent report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz The Saudis really disliked the Washington Post digging into their murder of Khashoggi, it doesn't seem too crazy that they set their sights on the boss and ended up s…
>AMI
I heard "amazon Machine Image" and thought WTF - are the AMIs compromised....
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#416Whatever you think about Jeff, this is the correct way to handle such things. We should all have the same character in such a situation (despite how the situation arose; in this case via an affair). Jeff has MANY other issues of moral disfortitude (we all do to some degree, though not at these scales). However, this particular event is to be applauded and emulated.
Amazon could pull a CloudFlare and knock them off the internet as nationalenquirer.com seems to be hosted on AWS. My guess is Amazon/Bezos already has multiple backups of the Enquirer's digital assets for forensic purposes. https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680
Aannnd in a spectacular twist to this beautiful soap opera, https://www.nationalenquirer.com is down.
Even if AWS has nothing to do with this it (unfairly) reflects extremely bad on them.
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#417> Bezos Exposes Pecker HuffPo headline
Now if they do publish those photos, you'd only have to add 'his' to that headline.
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#418It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…
Given the open rows Trump had with the FBI and the CIA, that these agencies are filled with democrats and even republican sympathisers who think Trump should be impeached, and that an abuse of power is the very raison d’etre of the impeachment procedure, I don’t see how he would get to give such an order without the whole world knowing about it. Doesn’t pass the smell test.
Foreign agency, different story. But there are enough people with a smartphone in the US that it doesn’t take a state-backed agency to obtain a compromising picture of a well known public figure.
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#419It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…
If the CEO and Founder of AWS can be easily hacked by Saudis then what does that mean for the rest of silicon valley in general and 99% of YC funded startups who rely on AWS?
well it's a lot easier to "hack" one person's iCloud account (in reality you just need a well placed personal assistant or employee at apple) than an entire cloud infrastructure without being noticed
Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
#420Granted, this strategy is very high risk unless you're one of the richest people in the world.
The problem I have with most super rich people is that they consider genuine risk far less important than potential embarrassment. E.g. they won't dare taking a stand politically because of the chance that someone will go public with some scandalous nonsense. Bezos on the other hand seems willing to calculate differently. I have to say, this has changed my opinion of him a lot in his favour. On the very remote chance…
Well, he's still Jeff Bezos, the man who runs Amazon, with all the unethical implications that come with that.
He has demonstrated a certain level of integrity, but that doesn't make him a Good Man.