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Maybe Eric S. Raymond's advice from 21 years ago is no longer true in today's internet: > Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly beha

by sampo 5y ago

Maybe Eric S. Raymond's advice from 21 years ago is no longer true in today's internet: > Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#style http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#style

YaBomm 5y ago
hkon 5y ago
Easily. It was advice for another time.
ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
In the late 90s I remember being advised to always use an anonymous handle by my older privacy and security conscious friends. I don't think that Raymond's advice was widely accepted.
tejohnso 5y ago
In a tribe of people who tend to do illegal things, or are perceived that way, especially by those employed by three letter acronym agencies, I don't want to be among the few who are using their real name.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
At the time, hacking also wasn't synonymous with "computer crime". So it was possible to be proud of stuff you did.
sedatk 5y ago
atmosx 5y ago
The ESR idea of "a hacker" has nothing to do with someone running illegal markets on darknet. ESR was thinking about ppl like Daniel: https://twitter.com/bagder https://twitter.com/bagder
- ziml77 5y ago
  We're on Hacker News. I think we understand what he means by the term. Even if you're not doing anything remotely illegal or harmful it's still not a good idea to be overly open about who you are on the internet.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Practices had long varied across the spectrum. You can find plenty of examples of people who used real names, or variants of them, or pseudonyms or handles, going back to the earliest days of the Net. ESR has long injected his own personal biases as established fact. The consistent fact noted here is that specific error, not the claims made through them. That said, it was the gradual intrusion of ever-more insistent exhortations to use real names, and the rise of surveillance services which convinced me that the practice of using given names was no longer advisable. I'd date this to well before Facebook and Google+, notably with the rise of information brokers in the early 2000s. By the time Google+ rolled out as an "identity service", I pretty much declared last straw and ceased virtually all my own real-name interactions. Call that circa 2011, or over a decade ago. I'd already been curtailing any such use for about a decade.
shrimpx 5y ago
I guess Eric Raymond never wanted to talk random banter about sports games on Reddit without his employers knowing about it.

by sampo 5y ago

YaBomm 5y ago

hkon 5y ago

Easily. It was advice for another time.

ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago

In the late 90s I remember being advised to always use an anonymous handle by my older privacy and security conscious friends. I don't think that Raymond's advice was widely accepted.

tejohnso 5y ago

In a tribe of people who tend to do illegal things, or are perceived that way, especially by those employed by three letter acronym agencies, I don't want to be among the few who are using their real name.

_carbyau_ 5y ago

At the time, hacking also wasn't synonymous with "computer crime". So it was possible to be proud of stuff you did.

sedatk 5y ago

atmosx 5y ago

The ESR idea of "a hacker" has nothing to do with someone running illegal markets on darknet. ESR was thinking about ppl like Daniel: https://twitter.com/bagder https://twitter.com/bagder

ziml77 5y ago
We're on Hacker News. I think we understand what he means by the term. Even if you're not doing anything remotely illegal or harmful it's still not a good idea to be overly open about who you are on the internet.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Practices had long varied across the spectrum. You can find plenty of examples of people who used real names, or variants of them, or pseudonyms or handles, going back to the earliest days of the Net. ESR has long injected his own personal biases as established fact. The consistent fact noted here is that specific error, not the claims made through them. That said, it was the gradual intrusion of ever-more insistent exhortations to use real names, and the rise of surveillance services which convinced me that the practice of using given names was no longer advisable. I'd date this to well before Facebook and Google+, notably with the rise of information brokers in the early 2000s. By the time Google+ rolled out as an "identity service", I pretty much declared last straw and ceased virtually all my own real-name interactions. Call that circa 2011, or over a decade ago. I'd already been curtailing any such use for about a decade.

shrimpx 5y ago

I guess Eric Raymond never wanted to talk random banter about sports games on Reddit without his employers knowing about it.