5 ms·

So, I'm gonna lay it out here as I am having a bad day and don't feel like censoring myself. I'd known Adrian since 1998. He came to 2600 meetings in SF and was

So, I'm gonna lay it out here as I am having a bad day and don't feel like censoring myself. I'd known Adrian since 1998. He came to 2600 meetings in SF and was a fixture there. In that time, he generally didn't make any friends. While he was gay, he was also stalking a lady at the meetings, and being super creepy about it. Eventually, he left SF and was homeless. He got in trouble for hacking the NYT and making himself some Lexis Nexis accounts. He then reported Chelsea Manning to the authorities when she reached out to him, connected because of their shared LGBTQ background. Lamo screwed Manning big time, but when he did, none of us who knew him were surprised. He was never a happy person, and never friendly to anyone I knew. I think his folks threw him out of the house in his teens. Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups who knew him long ago. He was just seemingly not comfortable being in society and making friends.

lainga 9y ago
Thanks for opening up. How much weight do you put in the theories (stated in other comments) that Adrian thought he was under FBI surveillance, and reported Manning's leaks out of fear?
- VonGuard 9y ago
  Honestly, I can't comment on that. I know Adrian was a SERIOUSLY good social engineer, and a fair to middling hacker. The chat logs show Adrian going very in depth with Chelsea, so if he thought the FBI was watching, he was purposefully giving them a good show.
CydeWeys 9y ago
I only had a couple run-ins with him online, but this doesn't surprise me at all. I've been an administrator on the English Wikipedia for over a decade now, and used to have a bit of a high profile on there. He would privately contact me occasionally trying to get me to make questionable edits to Wikipedia on his behalf. He came off as smarmy, manipulative, and his messages would occasionally veer into oddly sexual, inappropriate territory. I was sort of in awe of his "hacker" status at the time, which was why I put up with it for as long as I did, though I did eventually stop responding to him. This was well before the Manning stuff.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  This is interesting, CydeWeys is a well known, respected and long time administrator of Wikipedia.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    And for what it's worth, I've never given in and made questionable edits for anyone, not even Adrian. I will say, though, that being the target of social engineering by someone you know is renowned for being good at social engineering is an interesting experience. You almost can't help yourself even though you know better.
jsmthrowaway 9y ago
Come on, man. His body's not even cold and it was well-known that he was experiencing mental health issues, potentially his entire life, including discovering he suffered from Asperger's after an involuntary hold (that he described himself). Your venting isn't actually far from that diagnosis making sense. Is this really the time and place for this?
- VonGuard 9y ago
  Actually, I feel my comment is about as even handed as I could muster. Aspergers or not, he hurt a lot of people.
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    And he's dead. What more do you want? We're all human beings. Can't you put it aside for two seconds?
  - eganist 9y ago
    Serious question: what's the public benefit afforded by your comment?
    - FFShhn 9y ago
      whats the public benefit from lying about a dead guy?
    - arbitrage 9y ago
      What's the public benefit of hanging around on hacker news and chatting about things in general? Why would this be any different?
      - eganist 9y ago
        Hackernews discussion is intended to be productively informative. Knowingly putting someone down on a public forum does not make anyone better for it except maybe to educate the person making the mistake and others performing in an equal manner. Considering what Adrian was dealing with, any others like him might not even benefit from reading such things; this delivery method is more likely to fail than to succeed. It's fine to constructively criticize. But it's inherently impossible to do that with someone who's died because they're dead. And with disorders which risk social impairment, public shaming isn't the solution either; it just drives people who don't understand how to address their challenges further and further into a hole. I figure your question was intended as both maieutic and rhetorical, but please take into account what I'm sharing with you here. People are expected in some capacity to grow on hackernews. This comment contributed no growth value to anyone.
_wmd 9y ago
I appreciate that you're being candid, but it's clear you also know that posting what you posted in this context is somehow wrong - otherwise why else justify it (childishly) on having a bad day? Now my complaint: you could have posted this tomorrow and I wouldn't have so much trouble with it, but hijacking the announcement of someone's death to air privileged /and/ gossipy bits of their private life, their sexuality, their homelife, /and/ include allegations of sexual harassment all in one swoop strikes me as utterly distasteful, and the kind of personality I would not wish present at any party I ever attend.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  The comments here are honest, at least. Complicated people yield complicated discussions when they die.
  - thaumaturgy 9y ago
    There's nothing complicated about the comments here. So far they're merely awful: someone's death being used as an opportunity for people to air their grievances about that person. Imagine one of Adrian's family members sitting in a room with every person from this thread, and these comments being directed to them, in person. Fucksake HN. You're being more classless than usual today.
    - krapp 9y ago
      This seems to be typical for obituary threads about political and tech celebrities. Hacker News isn't known for its empathy on the best of days. Go see what happened when Ian Murdock died, if you want to know how crass this site can really be.
rimunroe 9y ago
> Lamo screwed Manning big time, but when he did, none of us who knew him were surprised. He was never a happy person, and never friendly to anyone I knew. I think his folks threw him out of the house in his teens. > Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups who knew him long ago. This is awfully similar to the impression of Aaron Swartz I've heard from those who knew him. All of them seem uncomfortable with the praise that was heaped on him after he died, though that's not to say that what happened to him wasn't awful. People are just very flawed, and it's hard to look at or acknowledge those flaws sometimes.
- r00fus 9y ago
  I seriously wonder how anyone can equate Adrian with Aaron. Aaron contributed to RSS, Creative Commons, and Markdown. Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rimunroe 9y ago
    > Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me. I completely agree, and I absolutely wasn't trying to draw a comparison between their actions.
ryan-c 9y ago
Adrian identified as bisexual, not gay. https://www.quora.com/If-youre-bisexual-and-coming-out-could-cost-you-almost-everything-you-have-right-now-would-it-be-worth-it/answer/Adri%C3%A1n-Lamo?share=1 https://www.quora.com/If-youre-bisexual-and-coming-out-could...
tptacek 9y ago
You met Adrian Lamo at 2600 meetings and wouldn't invite him to parties. Other people in the community were close friends with him and allowed him to stay in their homes for weeks or months. I don't know him really at all, but I think this is a poor way to sum anyone up.
- ytoi 9y ago
  I don't know the person in question. He might have been a great person overall, to the people around him or maybe he wasn't very pleasant, but that was it. I don't know. Certainly people tend to have widely different impressions other people. What I do know, and what the world should have thought us in the last couple of years, is that when this isn't the case it is often hiding in plain sight under layers of denial. And that the only way to uncover those things is to be able to speak about people and their actions. So while I do believe in being respectful I am not sure that we have earned the luxury to be uncomfortable when someone has a negative opinion about someone else.
patorjk 9y ago
If you don't mind, I have a question about Adrian that I've wondered about for a while. I first came across his name when I was researching the author of an old AOL hacking program known as Fate X. It was pretty popular on AOL at the time and was written by "Magus". In interviews around 2010, Adrian claimed he went by the handle Magus on AOL, and many people I talked to pointed to him when I was trying to track down the author. However, I later discovered the app was written by someone else. Did Adrian claim to have written Fate X? And did he ever go into detail about his AOL days? It may just be a coincidence that he used the same handle, but I always found this to be a little strange.
- VectorLock 9y ago
  I can't find any reference to him saying he created Fate X. The Magus handle is most likely purely coincidental.
throwaway2312 9y ago
Is 2600Meetings still active ? I wanted to attend one of the meetings.
- ooajim 9y ago
  Yup. You can check the website. https://www.2600.com/meetings/ https://www.2600.com/meetings/
azinman2 9y ago
I also know Adrian from 2600 meetings, starting in about 1992. I have invited him into my home and had him stay a while on various occasions. He’d always been comfortable in our friendship. I find your summary distasteful and not accurate. You should have enough respect for life to not take the opportunity to trash someone on their death announcement.

lainga 9y ago

Thanks for opening up. How much weight do you put in the theories (stated in other comments) that Adrian thought he was under FBI surveillance, and reported Manning's leaks out of fear?

VonGuard 9y ago
Honestly, I can't comment on that. I know Adrian was a SERIOUSLY good social engineer, and a fair to middling hacker. The chat logs show Adrian going very in depth with Chelsea, so if he thought the FBI was watching, he was purposefully giving them a good show.

CydeWeys 9y ago

I only had a couple run-ins with him online, but this doesn't surprise me at all. I've been an administrator on the English Wikipedia for over a decade now, and used to have a bit of a high profile on there. He would privately contact me occasionally trying to get me to make questionable edits to Wikipedia on his behalf. He came off as smarmy, manipulative, and his messages would occasionally veer into oddly sexual, inappropriate territory. I was sort of in awe of his "hacker" status at the time, which was why I put up with it for as long as I did, though I did eventually stop responding to him. This was well before the Manning stuff.

chris_wot 9y ago
This is interesting, CydeWeys is a well known, respected and long time administrator of Wikipedia.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  And for what it's worth, I've never given in and made questionable edits for anyone, not even Adrian. I will say, though, that being the target of social engineering by someone you know is renowned for being good at social engineering is an interesting experience. You almost can't help yourself even though you know better.

jsmthrowaway 9y ago

Come on, man. His body's not even cold and it was well-known that he was experiencing mental health issues, potentially his entire life, including discovering he suffered from Asperger's after an involuntary hold (that he described himself). Your venting isn't actually far from that diagnosis making sense. Is this really the time and place for this?

VonGuard 9y ago
Actually, I feel my comment is about as even handed as I could muster. Aspergers or not, he hurt a lot of people.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago
  And he's dead. What more do you want? We're all human beings. Can't you put it aside for two seconds?
- eganist 9y ago
  Serious question: what's the public benefit afforded by your comment?
  - FFShhn 9y ago
    whats the public benefit from lying about a dead guy?
  - arbitrage 9y ago
    What's the public benefit of hanging around on hacker news and chatting about things in general? Why would this be any different?
    - eganist 9y ago
      Hackernews discussion is intended to be productively informative. Knowingly putting someone down on a public forum does not make anyone better for it except maybe to educate the person making the mistake and others performing in an equal manner. Considering what Adrian was dealing with, any others like him might not even benefit from reading such things; this delivery method is more likely to fail than to succeed. It's fine to constructively criticize. But it's inherently impossible to do that with someone who's died because they're dead. And with disorders which risk social impairment, public shaming isn't the solution either; it just drives people who don't understand how to address their challenges further and further into a hole. I figure your question was intended as both maieutic and rhetorical, but please take into account what I'm sharing with you here. People are expected in some capacity to grow on hackernews. This comment contributed no growth value to anyone.

_wmd 9y ago

I appreciate that you're being candid, but it's clear you also know that posting what you posted in this context is somehow wrong - otherwise why else justify it (childishly) on having a bad day? Now my complaint: you could have posted this tomorrow and I wouldn't have so much trouble with it, but hijacking the announcement of someone's death to air privileged /and/ gossipy bits of their private life, their sexuality, their homelife, /and/ include allegations of sexual harassment all in one swoop strikes me as utterly distasteful, and the kind of personality I would not wish present at any party I ever attend.

CydeWeys 9y ago
The comments here are honest, at least. Complicated people yield complicated discussions when they die.
- thaumaturgy 9y ago
  There's nothing complicated about the comments here. So far they're merely awful: someone's death being used as an opportunity for people to air their grievances about that person. Imagine one of Adrian's family members sitting in a room with every person from this thread, and these comments being directed to them, in person. Fucksake HN. You're being more classless than usual today.
  - krapp 9y ago
    This seems to be typical for obituary threads about political and tech celebrities. Hacker News isn't known for its empathy on the best of days. Go see what happened when Ian Murdock died, if you want to know how crass this site can really be.

rimunroe 9y ago

> Lamo screwed Manning big time, but when he did, none of us who knew him were surprised. He was never a happy person, and never friendly to anyone I knew. I think his folks threw him out of the house in his teens. > Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups who knew him long ago. This is awfully similar to the impression of Aaron Swartz I've heard from those who knew him. All of them seem uncomfortable with the praise that was heaped on him after he died, though that's not to say that what happened to him wasn't awful. People are just very flawed, and it's hard to look at or acknowledge those flaws sometimes.

r00fus 9y ago
I seriously wonder how anyone can equate Adrian with Aaron. Aaron contributed to RSS, Creative Commons, and Markdown. Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rimunroe 9y ago
  > Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me. I completely agree, and I absolutely wasn't trying to draw a comparison between their actions.

ryan-c 9y ago

Adrian identified as bisexual, not gay. https://www.quora.com/If-youre-bisexual-and-coming-out-could-cost-you-almost-everything-you-have-right-now-would-it-be-worth-it/answer/Adri%C3%A1n-Lamo?share=1 https://www.quora.com/If-youre-bisexual-and-coming-out-could...

tptacek 9y ago

You met Adrian Lamo at 2600 meetings and wouldn't invite him to parties. Other people in the community were close friends with him and allowed him to stay in their homes for weeks or months. I don't know him really at all, but I think this is a poor way to sum anyone up.

ytoi 9y ago
I don't know the person in question. He might have been a great person overall, to the people around him or maybe he wasn't very pleasant, but that was it. I don't know. Certainly people tend to have widely different impressions other people. What I do know, and what the world should have thought us in the last couple of years, is that when this isn't the case it is often hiding in plain sight under layers of denial. And that the only way to uncover those things is to be able to speak about people and their actions. So while I do believe in being respectful I am not sure that we have earned the luxury to be uncomfortable when someone has a negative opinion about someone else.

patorjk 9y ago

If you don't mind, I have a question about Adrian that I've wondered about for a while. I first came across his name when I was researching the author of an old AOL hacking program known as Fate X. It was pretty popular on AOL at the time and was written by "Magus". In interviews around 2010, Adrian claimed he went by the handle Magus on AOL, and many people I talked to pointed to him when I was trying to track down the author. However, I later discovered the app was written by someone else. Did Adrian claim to have written Fate X? And did he ever go into detail about his AOL days? It may just be a coincidence that he used the same handle, but I always found this to be a little strange.

VectorLock 9y ago
I can't find any reference to him saying he created Fate X. The Magus handle is most likely purely coincidental.

throwaway2312 9y ago

Is 2600Meetings still active ? I wanted to attend one of the meetings.

ooajim 9y ago
Yup. You can check the website. https://www.2600.com/meetings/ https://www.2600.com/meetings/

azinman2 9y ago

I also know Adrian from 2600 meetings, starting in about 1992. I have invited him into my home and had him stay a while on various occasions. He’d always been comfortable in our friendship. I find your summary distasteful and not accurate. You should have enough respect for life to not take the opportunity to trash someone on their death announcement.