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I met John in an Atlanta airport lounge years ago[1]. I recognized him immediately as I've always admired him, and I decided to go up to him and tell him as muc
by neom 5y ago
I met John in an Atlanta airport lounge years ago[1]. I recognized him immediately as I've always admired him, and I decided to go up to him and tell him as much. He invited me to sit down, and told him about when I was a teenager in the 90s learning about tech entrepreneurs at the time, I always thought he was pretty cool and had good ideas. I told him I respected him, and that I was sure he'd lived an incredible life and thanked him for his contributions. He was clearly totally sloshed(inebriated) and insisted he called his wife so I could recount the story to her. I did. An hr later I had to leave to catch my flight, and i asked him where he was going - he said I'd find out some "pretty crazy shit" about him next week, and that "the doc was a bunch of BS". Two days later, I read Show Time had announced "Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee". In the brief time I spent with him, I have to say he had pretty positive energy for someone who was portrayed the way he was.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/qThvR2S.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qThvR2S.jpg
- Scoundreller 5y agoYour sketchy looking link which I mistakenly clicked on instead of copy and pasting into my VM is b0rk. Says "This item has exceeded its view limit!"
- llacb47 5y agoworks for me
- IntrepidWorm 5y agoRebuilt that link for ya, friend. Cheers! http://www.5z8.info/racist-message-board_u1s1lj_-----TAKE.TWITTER.LOGIN----- http://www.5z8.info/racist-message-board_u1s1lj_-----TAKE.TW...
- quenix 5y agoYou run a VM just to inspect "sketchy-looking links"? That sounds like paranoid behavior, if I'm being honest.
- Scoundreller 5y agoIf anything, not paranoid enough because still tracking. This place would be one of the best to hit with a 0day. Lots of IT people with full admin rights to entire corporate networks.
- throwaway3699 5y agoDoesn't fit the risk profile. 0days are used with surgical precision, not simply to dunk on hundreds of random businesses.
- Scoundreller 5y agoYou can send different things to different requesting hosts. Users at XYZ.gov gets the 0day, everyone else gets what is expected.
- bena 5y agoA healthy paranoia if you grew up with the internet. When a link can compromise an entire machine, having a machine you can literally throw away with no consequence is nice. Hell, I'd wager to say that containers wouldn't be a thing if it weren't for this kind of behavior. Looking for ways to build up and destroy VMs even faster.
- dwarfsandstuff 5y agoYou need a faster computer, man!
- pabs3 5y agoTry qemu's microvm mode, combined with virtiofs: https://qemu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/system/i386/microvm.html https://qemu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/system/i386/microvm.ht... https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/ https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/
- jazzyjackson 5y agoWindows 10 pro let’s you bring up fresh sandbox with one click and about 5 seconds to boot, it’s really not such a burden. Or maybe people just have temp VMs running anyway, and like others have said, if you’re browsing hacker news on your work machine you should probably do so with a healthy dose of paranoia.
- dang 5y agoWe've since replaced the original link, by the author's request.
- inovica 5y agoOften meeting your hero's does not go well, so pleased this did for you :)
- duxup 5y agoIt's unfortunate that a lot of things we like about people, doesn't really go hand in hand for making good choices otherwise.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoYes I've met a number of personable people who I completely disagreed with on politics and their actions, as long as you don't challenge their ideological stances. It's kind of like dealing with an alcoholic as long as you don't challenge their addiction everything tends to go well. It happened to me just last night on the phone. The human mind is a complex thing.
- byset 5y ago“…as long as you don’t challenge their ideological stances”? Maybe the problem is you
- rowanG077 5y agoSo you are surprised people are combative if you challenge their beliefs? How is that weird. That's seems completely normal to me.
- purplevendetta 5y agoWhy would you have to agree on politics to like someone? Comparing someones ideologial stance with a severe addiction is pretty messed up, dude. Are you so sure your stance is the absolute right one?
- h0h0h0h0111 5y agoOP didn't specify an ideology, and I think their statement stands for both people holding extreme and non-extreme views if they are held very strongly. EDIT: I'm no doubt the angry alcoholic archetype who doesn't want to discuss it when my Windows-using friends try and tell me it's better than my Linux setup. Then again, I know my stance is the absolute right one ;)
- Buttons840 5y agoWhen you say he was "sloshed" do you mean he was drunk? Or do you mean he was very pleased with your praise?
- heyoni 5y agoThe latter
- arthurcolle 5y agothe former
- diogenesjunior 5y agobruh: https://i.imgur.com/4Jw7EyE.png https://i.imgur.com/4Jw7EyE.png
- afterburner 5y agoSloshed means drunk.
- jiofih 5y agoNot sure why you’re downvoted. I was also confused for a moment - “inebriated with praise” is not an uncommon expression.
- justinclift 5y agoInteresting. Haven't heard that expression before.
- morelisp 5y agohttps://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=%22inebriated+with+praise%22 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=%22inebri... Five other hits in the entire Google corpus, all of which are the same use from 1921. It's so uncommon it's literally a shibboleth until you ruined it.
- hluska 5y agoSloshed is a weird word. It means drunk but if you go through etymology, it started at slush and moved to slosh which was to splash around in slush. Then somewhere along the lines, 'slosh' meant to pour without care and make a mess. That turned into pour alcohol carelessly and become a mess.
- toss1 5y agoMy interaction with McAfee was in the pre-internet '80s. I was called when a nearby international school got hit by a computer virus spread on floppy disks. Looking for sources of info, found the "Computer Virus Industry Association". Called, got a little bit of generic advice, and he mostly asked me to send sample disks. Turned out that the "CVIA" was basically a pretext of McAfee trolling for people like me to send samples for the anti-virus software he was writing. Sure, mildly clever ruse, but I always felt that the way it was done was a bit off - could have been more straightforward. I guess he thought people would not help him if he didn't use the pretext. Somehow the rest of the story does not surprise me. Making his millions seems to have given him no peace either. RIP
- onemoresoop 5y agoI'd argue that making those millions turned his life upside down, made his life drown in hedonism, eventually taking his mind and any shred of dignity. Still, RIP John
- duxup 5y agoIf given large amounts of resources, status, power, freedom to indulge whatever we wish. I wonder how many people would also spiral out of control.
- a0-prw 5y agoThe thing about spiralling out of control is that it's both awful and awesome. RIP John Mcafee, one of the rare people who have the balls to really live.
- cable2600 5y agoWe got McAfee for DOS in the late 1980s, dialed up his BBS for updates. Gave out copies at the college because it was shareware at the time, you buy a registration code.
- erwinkle 5y agoI looked at that photo and realized I knew you Small world, my co-founer and I won 2 DigitalOcean awards at HackTech and LA Hacks that you awarded us
- mbrodersen 5y agoRealise that people can be super nice to you and cruel/evil to somebody else. The serial killer living next door might be a great neighbour. That doesn’t change the facts of what he/she is.
- 3grdlurker 5y agoThis kind of subjectivism is so lacking in nuance, though, that the good parts that one is seeing (and, in many ways, choosing to see) are a mere reduction of the whole truth, and isn’t the whole truth of a person So a serial killer is a good person just because he’s a nice neighbor to you? If you’re hanging out with a friend in your inner circle of elites and that friend is nice to you but is very rude to waiters and other blue-collar workers, is that friend a good person? I’m not making a judgment of McAfee’s character here, just pointing out the myopic sense of morality. It’s so popular, too popular if I must say, among people these days.
- duxup 5y ago>So a serial killer is a good person just because he’s a nice neighbor to you? I don't think that is what the person you responded to was saying. Quite the opposite.
- mbrodersen 5y agoNope that’s not my point at all. Quite the opposite.
- beezle 5y agoWatch 'The Fall' mini-series for a good example
- sixothree 5y agoThat's a great picture.
- atlgator 5y agoI think people like that always have positive energy whether feigned or real. It's what attracts people (and money) to them. Famous celebrities, high level execs, politicians that I've met all had similar outward charm.
- tothecore13423 5y agoTaking in to account he was drunk he must be real
- lastdayy 5y agoUmm, no. Plenty of people have outward personas that they can maintain through extreme intoxication. Guy Burgess was well known when a British diplomat for protracted alcohol binges accompanied by all sorts of poor decision-making, but he never let slip that he was a Soviet spy.
- aklein 5y agoNot to mention Sasha Baron Cohen passing out from wine and waking up in character as Ali G - at least anecdotally
- BuckRogers 5y agoThat, and he was already wealthy by the point the OP ran into him. I’m still poor and every additional dollar I receive increases my happiness immensely. Dollars buy dignity and he had no restraints in life at all financially.
- qwerty456127 5y agoThis works less and less as you earn more. At some dozens/dollars a day (I don't even mean homeless, I mean when you pay the rent and only have some crumbs left - I have a lot of experience living this way) every additional dollar makes you happier. As soon as all your basic needs are covered you (I) lose all the emotional interest in money and only feel interested in experiences, free time and increased security.