4 ms·

Pardon the interruption but ... who are you? Your bio is empty.

hoppyhoppy2 6mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll
the__alchemist 6mo ago
Google Cliff Stoll. The dude is a total bro. One of my friends just bought one of his Klein bottles, and the included written materials attested to this indisputable fact. Unlike his death in 2026, which currently has an open dispute.
- CliffStoll 6mo ago
  Open dispute about my death? (pinch myself - yep, it hurts) So how could I convince people that I'm alive and not some AI construct? (do pass along my warm cheers to your nonorientable friend) -Cliff
bdcravens 6mo ago
Bio is probably empty because for a certain age of HN readers, he's already well known and regarded, but over time as the HN population grows it's obviously less likely to be the case.
- BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
  I'd argue that age isn't even relevant. I'd say that there's a significant overlap between readers of "The Cuckoo's Egg" and HN folk, whether young or old. I read it in my early teens.
  - CliffStoll 6mo ago
    Makes me feel even older, Benji. I wrote it when I was 38. Now, at 75, I'm astonished at how much has changed online. When I first started fooling with the Arpanet in the early 1980's, I calculated that I probably knew around 0.01 percent of everyone on the net. (where "knew" meant something like "have heard of" or "saw at a meeting") ... that number impressed me with how big the network was. Today, what percent of the network users does a person know? 1 / 10^-7 or so?
CliffStoll 6mo ago
My bio is empty. Hmmm. I'm giving a talk this Thursday (May 14th at a San Francisco Computer Security group, SFISCA. They asked for a bio. Here's what I wrote: Cliff Stoll graduated from Buffalo Public School #61 with a blue star for good attendance. In his spare time, Cliff pieces quilts and squeezes lumps of bituminous coal into diamonds. I wonder if they'll use it...
- moralestapia 6mo ago
  Hey, that sounds really nice ^^. I'm glad you accomplished that and that seems like a cool hobby. OTOH, I can see how times truly have changed. If I was as relaxed as you wrt. my carrer I'd be living under a bridge, lol.
rvnx 6mo ago
In the 1980s he was a sysadmin for a science lab in the US. After his boss spotted a discrepancy, he understood that one person was using the computer that he managed without permission. He was the only one who really cared. He pushed and asked everybody for help (FBI, NSA, CIA, Air Force, etc). That person was actually connecting from Germany. The German police arrested the guy and released him. It's a cool story because it puts you in the shoes of the 1980s phreaking and hacking scene but from the defense-side. Now he is selling glass bottles that look like klein bottles (but are obviously not but it's still a cool object, and again don't want to spoil).
- tialaramex 6mo ago
  Perhaps also notably in there somewhere is the part where Cliff insists, at about the same point SSL solves this problem, that there's never going to be e-commerce because how could you possibly pay anybody securely over the Internet ? This is between the point where Tim invents his crap hypermedia system with the grand name (the "World Wide Web") and the point where you can get a billion dollar valuation for your idea to sell water on the Internet (the "dot com bubble").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll

Google Cliff Stoll. The dude is a total bro. One of my friends just bought one of his Klein bottles, and the included written materials attested to this indisputable fact. Unlike his death in 2026, which currently has an open dispute.

CliffStoll 6mo ago
Open dispute about my death? (pinch myself - yep, it hurts) So how could I convince people that I'm alive and not some AI construct? (do pass along my warm cheers to your nonorientable friend) -Cliff

bdcravens 6mo ago

Bio is probably empty because for a certain age of HN readers, he's already well known and regarded, but over time as the HN population grows it's obviously less likely to be the case.

BenjiWiebe 6mo ago
I'd argue that age isn't even relevant. I'd say that there's a significant overlap between readers of "The Cuckoo's Egg" and HN folk, whether young or old. I read it in my early teens.
- CliffStoll 6mo ago
  Makes me feel even older, Benji. I wrote it when I was 38. Now, at 75, I'm astonished at how much has changed online. When I first started fooling with the Arpanet in the early 1980's, I calculated that I probably knew around 0.01 percent of everyone on the net. (where "knew" meant something like "have heard of" or "saw at a meeting") ... that number impressed me with how big the network was. Today, what percent of the network users does a person know? 1 / 10^-7 or so?

CliffStoll 6mo ago

My bio is empty. Hmmm. I'm giving a talk this Thursday (May 14th at a San Francisco Computer Security group, SFISCA. They asked for a bio. Here's what I wrote: Cliff Stoll graduated from Buffalo Public School #61 with a blue star for good attendance. In his spare time, Cliff pieces quilts and squeezes lumps of bituminous coal into diamonds. I wonder if they'll use it...

moralestapia 6mo ago
Hey, that sounds really nice ^^. I'm glad you accomplished that and that seems like a cool hobby. OTOH, I can see how times truly have changed. If I was as relaxed as you wrt. my carrer I'd be living under a bridge, lol.

rvnx 6mo ago

In the 1980s he was a sysadmin for a science lab in the US. After his boss spotted a discrepancy, he understood that one person was using the computer that he managed without permission. He was the only one who really cared. He pushed and asked everybody for help (FBI, NSA, CIA, Air Force, etc). That person was actually connecting from Germany. The German police arrested the guy and released him. It's a cool story because it puts you in the shoes of the 1980s phreaking and hacking scene but from the defense-side. Now he is selling glass bottles that look like klein bottles (but are obviously not but it's still a cool object, and again don't want to spoil).

tialaramex 6mo ago
Perhaps also notably in there somewhere is the part where Cliff insists, at about the same point SSL solves this problem, that there's never going to be e-commerce because how could you possibly pay anybody securely over the Internet ? This is between the point where Tim invents his crap hypermedia system with the grand name (the "World Wide Web") and the point where you can get a billion dollar valuation for your idea to sell water on the Internet (the "dot com bubble").