Mims, Christopher

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) tech/IT newsroom columnist, 2014 – present.

No IT education. Only a bachelor's degree in behavioral biology and neuroscience (according to Mims), which is not an IT degree; see The Most Important IT Credential: An IT Education in Principles of IT Incompetence. Biology is the science for people, often women, who can't do math, which is absolutely necessary for being an IT expert. Further, like psychology, people often go into behavioral biology to work out their own psychological problems.

On 14 Jul 2014, Mims's article The Password is Finally Dying. Here's Mine was published in the WSJ and, as advertised (unusual for the WSJ), Mims publicized his Twitter password, believing no harm could come from this. However, just after the article was published, a stranger called Mims on his cell phone, even though as a public figure Mims tried to keep his cell phone number private. The stranger had used Mims's published password to access Mims's Twitter account, and, as everyone knows, your Twitter account has your cell phone number; it's the first thing Twitter asks for when you set up an account, and it's always there, in case it needs to be changed.

If the stranger hadn't been so honest and so quick in notifying Mims, he or a hacker could have taken over Mims's Twitter account and, using the credibility of the WSJ, tweeted something to start a war; see Trump Using Twitter is a National Security Risk.

Of course, a national/world newspaper like the WSJ telling tens of thousands of people it's OK to publicize their passwords is a huge legal liability (although, admittedly, most people are smarter than Mims so wouldn't do this), so the next day Mims and the WSJ published an article saying not to do this, but falsely blamed a flaw in Twitter's account security. Admittedly, Twitter's account security is bad (see How Twitter Made a Hash of Passwords), but there is absolutely no way to protect against such user stupidity (that's why phishing emails work so well).

Mims is too IT incompetent (too stupid in general really) to be allowed to use electronic devices at all, never mind be the tech/IT columnist for the WSJ newsroom; see IT Hiring: Media in Principles of IT Incompetence.

More recently, from Twitter vs. Mastodon, Free Speech vs. Free Software:

I myself noted and complained about the woke Wall Street Journal (WSJ) newsroom trying to make Twitter fail, in violation of SEC rules (see Banned-For-Life Trader and Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget Using Fake News for Stock Price Manipulation? and Stock Market Crash Deja Vu: Reddit Violates Securities Exchange Act).

(Note that, paradoxically, the WSJ newsroom, led by Editor in Chief Matt Murray, is woke but the WSJ opinion editors, led by Paul Gigot, are not. They hate each other and often write directly contradictory articles. The woke WSJ newsroom even tried to silence the WSJ opinion editors with a cease-and-desist petition.)

IT incompetent woke Christopher Mims is the WSJ tech/IT columnist, part of the woke WSJ newsroom. On 6 Nov 2022, Christopher Mims, @mims on Twitter, claimed in a tweet to be quitting Twitter:

People Like Me Should Be Thanking Elon Musk for Convincing Us to Finally Quit Twitter

It's been real y'all. See you on the other side.

The next day, 7 Nov 2022, the WSJ published, as part of the news section, a column Christopher Mims wrote:

Why Elon Musk’s Quest to Revive Twitter Is Likely to Fail

This is the world's most important financial newspaper, whose reporting can and has caused companies to fail, actively trying to convince people, in violation of SEC rules, that Twitter is going to fail, so that it will fail. You can tell this is the purpose because Mims/WSJ does not even give a logical reason why Twitter is likely to fail. Mims/WSJ's premise is given in the first paragraph:

Elon Musk is treating Twitter like a startup. The thing about startups is, most of them fail.

This is just stupid. Most startups fail because they are undercapitalized. By no stretch of the imagination is Twitter undercapitalized.

That day, I sent an email to the WSJ to complain about this crime. (Earlier I had sent an email to WSJ General Counsel Jason Conti to protest the WSJ's use of bait and switch in WSJ subscription advertisements, which resulted in the WSJ stopping this illegal practice.)

Mims is too corrupt to be allowed to be the tech/IT columnist for the WSJ newsroom; see IT Hiring: IT Incompetence Breeds Disloyalty and Corruption in Principles of IT Incompetence.

The Wall Street Journal newsroom has gone to the dogs.