[junaru]

[flagged]

[tobyhinloopen]

Something being tax deductible doesn't mean it is free. It still costs money, you just don't pay taxes over that money.

[Cyclone_]

It's not gaslighting. They were transparent enough to own their mistake. The donation isn't really the main story.

[blitzar]

Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything.

[worthless-trash]

I believe you may be misusing the term gaslighting.

[junaru]

To me this looks like getting hacked, donating to some public non-profit, deduct it via taxes (essentially spending nothing) and spin it online as a positive.

[misiek08]

This one doesn't change that much like others said, but it is still burning money. Universities and their projects waste a lot of money - from buying hardware via complicated processes to projects wasting millions of USD (in cases I know it is EUR). Sponsored by companies like Samsung or Siemens, not releasing anything useful for years and still extending projects for "further research" :(

It's their money in this case so they can burn it any way they want and great to see they didn't support script kiddies here (assuming it was some leftover files on forgotten object storage bucket, sadly unencrypted or with keys available nearby).

[squigz]

Lots of companies waste money too. I'd rather see universities spend it on research and studies than companies developing useless products and shutting down after a year.