What an absolute failure of the legal system to understand the issue at hand and appropriately assign liability.

Here's an article with more context, but tl;dr the "hackers" used credential stuffing, meaning that they used username and password combos that were breached from other sites. The users were reusing weak password combinations and 23andme only had visibility into legitimate login attempts with accurate username and password combos.

Arguably 23andme should not have built out their internal data sharing service quite so broadly, but presumably many users are looking to find long lost relatives, so I understand the rationale for it.

Thus continues the long, sorrowful, swan song of the password.

I completely agree with you. My theory is that there are a whole lot of Americans for whom the public education system failed horribly in their attempt to teach civics.

Oh, and I'm sure racism and sexism are also playing a meaningful role.

Yes, this is not uncommon in US politics.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

In U.S. politics, the period between (presidential and congressional) elections in November and the inauguration of officials early in the following year is commonly called the "lame-duck period".

A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen as a lame duck from early in the second term, since term limits prevent them from contesting re-election four years later. However, not personally having to face the electorate again makes a second-term president more powerful than they were in their first term as they are thus freer to take politically unpopular actions. However, this comes with caveats; as the de facto leader of their political party, the president's actions affect how the party performs in the midterm elections two years into the second term, and, to some extent, the success of that party's nominee in the next presidential election four years in the future. For these reasons, it can be argued that a president in their second term is not a lame duck at all.

So while you're right that the assertion the author is making is misguided, it's a fallacy that is made often enough that some might conflate it with reality.

I mean shit, Dick Cheney is left of Trump. What does that say?

Good seems pretty subjective tbh but if you're interested in "research", f95zone is probably your best resource.

Not to mention they're probably paying double for it - once through their taxes for the public school the kids aren't attending plus the tuition for the private school.

Ah the ol' security by obscurity plan. Classic.

Sounds weird from inside the echo chamber though

¿Porque no los dos?

Why couldn't it be both?

Respectfully, you were the one who pointed out the impact of the Network Effect.

The adoption of a product by an additional user can be broken into two effects: an increase in the value to all other users (total effect) and also the enhancement of other non-users' motivation for using the product (marginal effect).

Thus, users don't need to understand the credentials of the platform if the network effect is strong enough, but as users leave the network, the value (credentials) of the platform as a whole decreases.

Another way to think about it is that the amount Twitter "matters" is directly related to how much we collectively agree it matters. While not directly transferable, I'd suggest that Keynes' Animal Spirits concept can help us to understand why this might be the case - prevailing attitudes towards a platform can have a profound impact on their value.

Counterpoint: Twitter will continue to maintain a critical mass of users until enough people move somewhere else to make it irrelevant. Continuing to use it only serves to further credentialize the platform, making it even less likely that users will find a new home someplace else.

It's not much but they try a whole lot more than most.