As with most things, the truly terrible stuff is a minority of users. There are lots of areas on 4chan that are completely harmless and people just discussing mundane, boring stuff that they deem interesting.
Or pragmatism borne out of watching Oracle be a slimy, evil steaming pile of douchebaggery that has only been recently surpassed by Apple in the corporate warmongering department. It's like CentOS, with a heaping helping of evil in every bite.
Do you have a better idea? Signature-based malware scanning is a joke and a half. I know CA"s can be gamed but unless you're proposing a better solution then don't complain.
Yes; they can do what they're doing now, but drop the scary language. Scaring users with non-specific threatening language does not enlighten them.
Since it's almost unheard-of for malware to be signed with a legitimate, unrevoked certificate, they could also afford to give signed executables much greater leeway when deciding what to report to the user. People seem to be assuming that signing the .exe is enough to keep the dire warnings from appearing. That is not the case, or at least it wasn't the case a few months ago.
Finally, they can provide a standardized method for whitelisting URLs (and not individual executables) instead of what they're doing now, which is apparently nothing.
They are giving signed EXEs much greater leeway, since the publishers is verified by a CA, providing a secure base on which the publisher's reputation is determined.
Most people are going to donate less than $200 and the people that will donate will do it because they love the site, not because they're looking for swag. I've been reading PA since 2001 and aside from buying a t-shirt, have been entertained 3 times a week for over a decade for free, aside from the inherent value of my eyeballs. If I toss them some cash it will be because I love the site and because I want to support what I regard as a really awesome company, not because I demand they give me more stuff.
Sadly though now users have had years of poor memory management burned into their memories. Regardless of if it was FF or the addons, it's associated with FF now and will take time to shed.
This case, had it gone to trial, would have had very grave repercussions for anyone who makes a living on the Internet. The fact that it is being dropped is (A) good news for the people that like Oatmeal and (B) good news for anyone who tries to make a dime online. Since I would wager the bulk of the people that frequent Hacker News fall into one or both of those camps, I would think that this story would be relevant.
Because the MPAA and RIAA represent the owners and executives of the movie and record companies. "Hollywood" is also comprised of moneyed actors, musicians and artists that generally tend to lean to the left politically. There is definitely a difference between the two "camps"
MVC doesn't fit cleanly into the world of webapps, but it's still a lot better than business logic in view code, or monolithic classes than handle all HTTP interaction, etc. I've seen some really terrible Model 1 code in my lifetime.
