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I can’t help but shake my head at most of these comments. There was a time when we celebrated anecdotes like this here on Hacker News. I’ve seen this story circ
by dereg 4y ago
I can’t help but shake my head at most of these comments. There was a time when we celebrated anecdotes like this here on Hacker News. I’ve seen this story circulated many times but this is the first time I’ve seen this sort of reaction. These aren’t rose colored glasses, anyone can look up threads of old in which we cheered such defiance toward authority.
People are frothing to frame this story with 2023 glasses and, to me, this reaction makes it all the more clear how today’s culture is so corrosive. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not about privilege of rich white men. Maybe it’s about the rigid conformism that the tech industry has imbued in its people in this past decade. The screams of people glued to Anki preparing for leetcode interviews, not understanding why someone would dare challenge the status quo. Regardless, it’s a sign of the times.
- sandworm101 4y agoThat was before we knew that real people suffer after pulling similar stunts. We all know of someone who did something stupid and has faced a lifetime of consiquence. Nobody dares put a fake bomb in a school locker (Woz did that) or give false documents to police for fun. Such things are no longer jokes. They screw up entire lives. I used to ride fast motorcycles. I know people who ran from the police for fun. Better camera tech in recent years means nobody gets away with that anymore. And when caught, your life grinds to a hault.
- ztrww 4y agoI’m really unsure whether doing the same thing now would have a high risk of “screwing up” your life. It’s not like he showed anyone a counterfeit ID. What he did is the same as showing a random company ID. Not exactly grounds for arrest especially if he can provide a driver’s license if asked to.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sandworm101 4y agoIt was a counterfeit ID. If the cop reading it walks away with the reasonable, but false, belief that the person works for the dod, he has presented a counterfeit ID. If he did it to trick the cop, he has knowingly presented false information/lied to police.
- sbarre 4y agoAnd people jaywalk all the time. Can we stop being so obtuse and only look at the letter of the law and think about the actual practical real-life consequence as a measure of severity? This was a joke, and no harm was done. Are you really advocating for a felony offence here? This is the same line of thinking, just reversed, that people use to say "well it's not illegal" when someone does something super shitty that actually has awful consequences.
- fzeroracer 4y agoThe letter of the law is that he presented a counterfeit ID to a federal officer where lying to a federal officer is a very serious offense. You can argue that 'well it was a joke!!' but if you were to joke around to your nearest FBI officer about how you have a bomb in your home and you're going to use it I imagine they wouldn't find it very funny.
- sbarre 4y ago> if you were to joke around to your nearest FBI officer about how you have a bomb in your home and you're going to use it I imagine they wouldn't find it very funny. Agreed! Joking about a bomb is a much more serious and very different situation than showing a joke ID in a relaxed situation - and when you probably have your real ID in your pocket.
- sandworm101 4y agoJokes are dangerous. There is a fine line between jokes, wasting an officer's time, and outright obstruction. I wouldnt want to risk my joke landing flat and an angry officer deciding to make me an example.
- jameshart 4y agoWhat happened to ‘don’t talk to the cops without a lawyer ever?’ Is there an ‘unless you’re Woz and it might be funny’ exception to that rule? The fact is there is, and always has been, a ‘wealthy white guy’ exception to that rule and these kinds of shenanigans just draw attention to it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pjc50 4y agoI don't know why this is downvoted, it's correct. Social media means that pranks are no longer ephemeral, and we can also be more aware of how badly wrong it could go.
- thinkyfish 4y ago"Such things are no longer jokes. They screw up entire lives." But should they screw up lives? Why should we put up with authorities that can't take a joke. This is the foundation of the culture of defiance that hacking was all about expressing.
- abledon 4y ago> But should they screw up lives? Why should we put up with authorities that can't take a joke. They key concept here is 'trickery', and how 'tricked' someone is on a spectrum. Society trusts our authorities to give their best efforts to keep our daily actions within the realm of 'the law'. There is a spectrum of what one considers a 'joke'. If you tell an authority a dad joke, when they ask you a serious question, that is a fine place on the spectrum to joke with authorities. If you are giving them fake IDs to _trick_ them (and thus, trick society at large, who have delegated power to the authorities by vote etc...), that is not a good thing, to trick others you are living with, at the far end of the 'joke/trickery' spectrum.
- sandworm101 4y agoThey shouldn't, but they do. Just because a law or policy is wrong doesn't mean it isn't a solid reality that other people cannot afford to joke about. I'm not s fan of US drug policy, but I wouldn't dare carry a bag of false drugs just to make fun of police officers who cannot tell the difference.
- Aeolun 4y ago> Why should we put up with authorities that can't take a joke. Probably because the number of instances of people with real bombs has gone up. It’s not a joke any more because the real bomb isn’t the exception.
- jasonladuke0311 4y agoHave they?
- cloutchaser 4y agoYou are right (sometimes), but so is the prankster for challenging authority sometimes. A healthy society both has rule following and rule challenging. Sometimes there’s too much rule following, sometimes there’s too much chaos, and then things balance themselves out ideally. If anyone says only one side is the right one, they are ideologically captured. It’s like saying only left or right is the right way to govern a country. It’s both and neither. We need this conflict within society to arrive at healthy decisions. Get rid of one side at your peril.
- ipaddr 4y ago"Better camera tech in recent years means nobody gets away with that anymore." Because police rely on technology committing a crime without your cellphone means you most likely will not get caught. We live in an age where wearing masks is acceptable. Where people let you steal from stores and where crime is ignored unless it's on twitter. You can get away with so much more today.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> You can get away with so much more today. Depends if you have something to lose. I suspect a lot of readers here are in the middle ground, where their net present value (including career/family/political/etc opportunities) is not high enough where they can afford to shield themselves without big sacrifices. But it is also not low enough to worth risking losing it all. For example, they might be able to afford a house in a nice school district, daycare, saving for retirement, paying for healthcare, and taking care of elderly parents, but a job loss from one spouse could easily derail this train, and certainly legal expenses would.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoI don't know about how ubiquitous cameras are in NYC, but in China you will absolutely get caught by cameras, and no, a mask will not help you.
- sandworm101 4y agoBetter dash camera on police cars, and police body cams, mean they always have your plate number. You cannot run for fun if they already know where you live/work.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoThere are US cities with drones in the air taking pictures of the city. Say somebody robs a bank. Review the picture history from when they arrived at the bank, go backward watching their car until you find out where they live. Drive over and arrest them. This 'time machine' feature of ubiquitous surveillance is going to be a brave new world.
- kome 4y agoyes, conformity and fear of authority is strange here. no more hackers, just business ppl.
- koonsolo 4y agoIn my experience, business ppl are the ones who like to break the rules more than others. I would argue most people here are employed engineers, and they mostly love following rules.
- ilyt 4y agoYes but they ask lawyers how exactly they can break the rules and not get caught
- _yb2s 4y agoI disagree, a key social purpose of complex legal rules is regulatory capture that allows powerful people to stay powerful. Smart powerful people don’t have to break the rules, they follow them in practice but not in spirit, whereas people without access to lawyers and legal sophistication break rules unknowingly, even when following them in spirit.
- koonsolo 4y agoI'm talking in the practical kind of way: speeding, parking where you're not supposed to, "better to ask forgiveness than permission" kind of things, creative bookkeeping (I'm from Belgium :D), ... . No idea what kind of high profile business owners you know, but in my circle in Belgium, most are small business owners. In my experience, employees like to follow rules, business owners like to push their boundaries.
- _yb2s 4y agoI do know some high powered industry leaders in the USA. At that level you don’t break the rules, you make them… specifically to exclude you competitors while leaving carefully crafted loopholes for yourself. I agree that what you are talking about applies to scrappy startup types, the same people that eventually stop breaking the rules once they have enough power not to need to.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rimliu 4y ago[flagged]
- smoldesu 4y agoUnless the parent made their account when they were 2 years old, I don't think so.
- CalRobert 4y agoI think things like this were more likely to get laughed off or at most a scolding from a judge back then, as opposed to some BS terrorism-related charge, back in the day. I think back to what I did in high school with model rocket engines and the like and I'd probably be convicted of something now. Standard caveat of being a middle class white dude makes this easier.
- uni_rule 4y agoOften my dad would recant to me absolutely batshit anecdotes about the antics people around him got into punctuated by "but it was the 70s". The past truly is a different country.
- andrepd 4y agoWell to play devil's advocate, handing a police officer a joke ID is just a silly bit of fun, not really a "challenge to the status quo". Amusing story tho.
- curtis3389 4y agoHacking was aggressively criminalized. We lost Aaron Swartz. There are real threats to people with curiosity these days, and that seems to be an intentional result of the laws and enforcement in the US.
- yetihehe 4y ago> There are real threats to people with curiosity these days Don't try to be too curious then, or you will be prosecuted.
- foobiekr 4y agoIn my personal observation, a lot of what spoiled the zany fun of using technology for rule breaking was the rise of really evil large tech companies. It kind of took the mirth out of it because their evil willingness to do anything to Hoover up more data is always sitting there in the background.
- ilyt 4y agoThe man is dead inside already, leave him alone
- jsnell 4y agoNothing says "challenging the status quo" like a multi-millionaire messing with normal people who are just trying to do their job... I'm sure I when I first read this story, I thought it was hilarious. But since then, I've gained at least little bit of empathy. Think of this story from the perspective of the other people. Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as possible, just to waste their time and then pull off a "a-ha, this is actually some really obscure legal tender that I as a rich guy can afford to spend to have a cool story to tell about showing up a casino security guy".
- nouveaux 4y agoThe reason why it used to be celebrated on HN, and why GP laments the change is that Woz hacked security. This is a great example of social engineering and it's in the vein of the old 80's hacker mentality. Besides for the fun story, it is a security breach that all these security personnel failed to pick up on. I agree with the GP that this kind of thing should be celebrated on HN and we should encourage the next generation to continue hacking.
- jsnell 4y agoI don't think any security breach was demonstrated here. Now, Woz was obviously an amazing hacker back in the day and has a reputation of being a good person. So one would imagine there are stories that show him being really clever that are, you know, actually clever rather than just showing off an information asymmetry about trivia (re: these sheets of $2 bills). Where the punchline is something wholesome, rather than him humiliating strangers who have done literally nothing wrong.
- bowsamic 4y agoWe’ve moved past that naivety to a place of higher social consciousness
- alar44 4y agoI fucking hope this is satirical.
- bowsamic 4y agoNo, everyone is more aware of hurting each other now
- mardifoufs 4y agoThose poor secret service agents.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- workaccount21 4y agoAgreed, even events like DEFCON and the general infosec scene seem to be leaning more and more towards "conformance". It used to be a badge of shame to be a fed and now I feel uncomfortable talking poorly about the US intelligence community. I hesitate to complain because those who questioned the status quo in the past had the same types of people breathing down their neck. I will simply ignore them and continue doing my own thing
- monocasa 4y agoHell, half the DEFCON goons are .gov employees or contractors now in their day job.
- scarface74 4y agoAnd of all people to demonize, Steve Wozniak?!!
- ShamelessC 4y agoThis is an objective _abuse_ of authority/power by an ultrawealthy, tone-deaf "hacker", who frankly didn't seem to remember any of his engineering skills when he spoke at my university ten years ago. Please tell me you see that. Or at least, are not personally ultrawealthy yourself.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DarknessFalls 4y agoI appreciate this comment more than you could know. The color is getting sucked out of life by people like this.
- Aeolun 4y agoI think it’s more that we used to believe a secret service agent could take a joke. Right now you’d have to be worried they draw a gun and shoot you, or arrest you and jail you for life. Zero tolerance!
- ss108 4y ago> anyone can look up threads of old in which we cheered such defiance toward authority. Maybe it's good if the industry has ceased having such a teenagery view of things. The article won't load for me, but it seems there was no meaningful protest against some illicit government abuse of authority here. Dude was just printing and using fake IDs because he could. As a millennial who used to be much more simpatico with your way of thinking, I would say I've become very against it because it is exactly the sort of attitude that I have seen lead people to Trumpsim, anti-vaxxing, etc. It's just irresponsible and arrogant to think that authority/government = bad and that any sort of finger to the man is intrinsically worth celebrating.
- Sakos 4y agoThe people here have largely become insufferable outside of highly technical topics.
- jasonladuke0311 4y agoYeah this place has become less interesting over the years. 95% of comments are nitpicks, sophistry, or just inflammatory.