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Nadim had a legitimate and reasonable question. For those who don't know, here was Thomas Ptacek recently joking about Nadim's penis: https://mobile.twitter.co

by dcposch 10y ago

Nadim had a legitimate and reasonable question. For those who don't know, here was Thomas Ptacek recently joking about Nadim's penis: https://mobile.twitter.com/tqbf/status/705825790529662976 https://mobile.twitter.com/tqbf/status/705825790529662976 Here he is telling Nadim "go fuck yourself, forever": https://mobile.twitter.com/tqbf/status/705900243313758208 https://mobile.twitter.com/tqbf/status/705900243313758208 This is unprofessional. That kind of bullying is especially unacceptable coming from someone who has a lot of money and a pretty big audience, directed at someone who is young and just starting out. I think Hacker News should be better than this.

lawnchair_larry 10y ago
> I think Hacker News should be better than this. I don't think it should. I think us pretending that we are some group of regal statesmen is a bunch of pretentious bullshit. Being civil is preferable, but not if it means being fake. People aren't any less "mean" on HN, they're just good at bullying in more subtle ways, and we are all worse off for it.
- tptacek 10y ago
  The point isn't that we're "statesmen". It's just that we check as much incivility as we can at the door.
- nl 10y ago
  Being civil is preferable, but not if it means being fake. I don't understand this. Everything is fake to some degree. Being civil is a good thing.
tptacek 10y ago
You know what? It's not part of my argument that I'm above all the vitriol and venom in amateur secure messaging. You're doing a fine job of positioning yourself right in the middle of it as well. As long as the typical HN reader leaves this thread understanding how much bullshit drama is attached to this field, I don't really care one way or the other what their opinion of me is. The knives are out for Signal. It's not hard to see that. Of the "independent" messaging schemes, Signal is probably the only one that has a chance of relevance 5 years from now. Everyone else is working on something that will be a checkbox feature for Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook in less time than that. I'm happy about that. Clearly, not everyone else is.
- uola 10y ago
  "Signal is probably the only one that has a chance of relevance 5 years from now" Which is exactly why I, even though I don't care much for drama (infosec drama especially), find myself "complaining" about Signal from time to time. Because we are going to have to live with it. If I could go back and "complain" about PGP, before that became the preferred "just use" argument, I would.
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  I think perhaps the worst thing you've done here is deprive the viewers at home of their closure to the question of whether or not kaepora knows what his ultimate transgression was, or if he is feigning ignorance to elicit sympathy from the audience. What did he do? Does he know what he did? Do we ever get to find out? The people want answers.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    fa9c5885a129a3dd5faf1b55bfdaf2d3e3a3de442bf6c817724febaa2b01bc71 Nadim has enough information to know what that hash corresponds to. Maybe he'll tell you. I won't. Not until I'm ready.
    - nkobeissi 10y ago
      I have no idea what that hash corresponds to and haven't even seen it before. Also, to be clear. I have absolutely not the slightest idea what kind of issue tptacek seems to be referring to in general. Honest. I'd swear under oath if I could.
DanBC 10y ago
> I think Hacker News should be better than this. I'm not sure how linking to twitter supports your comment that HN needs to improve. If he'd said that on HN he'd have been (I assume) banned. dang is constantly asking people not to be mean or dumb, or banning people for being mean.
- dcposch 10y ago
  That's fair. Here on HN, tptacek writes negatively about Nadim surprisingly often. I do think it's bullying, though you're right that it's more subtle than his behavior on Twitter. dang is great. I just wish we had a bit less negativity. -- Finally, a brief history for readers who dont know yet: * Cryptocat v1 was a cat themed anonymous chat webapp with very broken homebrew encryption. It was basically Nadim's crypto learning project as far as I can tell when he was ~20 years old. * Snowden allegedly used it at some point. Oops. * Crypto experts reviewed it and found significant flaws. Tptacek wrote about how terrible it was, how JS crypto is Considered Harmful, how amateurs shouldn't write crypto because they could get someone killed, etc * Cryptocat v2 a desktop chat app using Axolotl / Signal Protocol for e2e encryption. Nadim is a phd student now. It's a new and totally separate codebase. tldr; there's no reason to assume that Cryptocat v2 sucks in the ways the original did. It may be totally sound. (I have no involvement w the project and have not reviewed the code.)
- anon1385 10y ago
  >If he'd said that on HN he'd have been (I assume) banned No he wouldn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6098474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6098474

by dcposch 10y ago

lawnchair_larry 10y ago

> I think Hacker News should be better than this. I don't think it should. I think us pretending that we are some group of regal statesmen is a bunch of pretentious bullshit. Being civil is preferable, but not if it means being fake. People aren't any less "mean" on HN, they're just good at bullying in more subtle ways, and we are all worse off for it.

tptacek 10y ago
The point isn't that we're "statesmen". It's just that we check as much incivility as we can at the door.
nl 10y ago
Being civil is preferable, but not if it means being fake. I don't understand this. Everything is fake to some degree. Being civil is a good thing.

tptacek 10y ago

You know what? It's not part of my argument that I'm above all the vitriol and venom in amateur secure messaging. You're doing a fine job of positioning yourself right in the middle of it as well. As long as the typical HN reader leaves this thread understanding how much bullshit drama is attached to this field, I don't really care one way or the other what their opinion of me is. The knives are out for Signal. It's not hard to see that. Of the "independent" messaging schemes, Signal is probably the only one that has a chance of relevance 5 years from now. Everyone else is working on something that will be a checkbox feature for Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook in less time than that. I'm happy about that. Clearly, not everyone else is.

uola 10y ago
"Signal is probably the only one that has a chance of relevance 5 years from now" Which is exactly why I, even though I don't care much for drama (infosec drama especially), find myself "complaining" about Signal from time to time. Because we are going to have to live with it. If I could go back and "complain" about PGP, before that became the preferred "just use" argument, I would.
lawnchair_larry 10y ago
I think perhaps the worst thing you've done here is deprive the viewers at home of their closure to the question of whether or not kaepora knows what his ultimate transgression was, or if he is feigning ignorance to elicit sympathy from the audience. What did he do? Does he know what he did? Do we ever get to find out? The people want answers.
- tptacek 10y ago
  fa9c5885a129a3dd5faf1b55bfdaf2d3e3a3de442bf6c817724febaa2b01bc71 Nadim has enough information to know what that hash corresponds to. Maybe he'll tell you. I won't. Not until I'm ready.
  - nkobeissi 10y ago
    I have no idea what that hash corresponds to and haven't even seen it before. Also, to be clear. I have absolutely not the slightest idea what kind of issue tptacek seems to be referring to in general. Honest. I'd swear under oath if I could.

DanBC 10y ago

> I think Hacker News should be better than this. I'm not sure how linking to twitter supports your comment that HN needs to improve. If he'd said that on HN he'd have been (I assume) banned. dang is constantly asking people not to be mean or dumb, or banning people for being mean.

dcposch 10y ago
That's fair. Here on HN, tptacek writes negatively about Nadim surprisingly often. I do think it's bullying, though you're right that it's more subtle than his behavior on Twitter. dang is great. I just wish we had a bit less negativity. -- Finally, a brief history for readers who dont know yet: * Cryptocat v1 was a cat themed anonymous chat webapp with very broken homebrew encryption. It was basically Nadim's crypto learning project as far as I can tell when he was ~20 years old. * Snowden allegedly used it at some point. Oops. * Crypto experts reviewed it and found significant flaws. Tptacek wrote about how terrible it was, how JS crypto is Considered Harmful, how amateurs shouldn't write crypto because they could get someone killed, etc * Cryptocat v2 a desktop chat app using Axolotl / Signal Protocol for e2e encryption. Nadim is a phd student now. It's a new and totally separate codebase. tldr; there's no reason to assume that Cryptocat v2 sucks in the ways the original did. It may be totally sound. (I have no involvement w the project and have not reviewed the code.)
anon1385 10y ago
>If he'd said that on HN he'd have been (I assume) banned No he wouldn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5883501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6098474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6098474