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For those people wondering why so many comments here are saying 'Glad to see Kathy blogging again', it's because she stopped blogging in 2007 after getting seve
by tobtoh 13y ago
For those people wondering why so many comments here are saying 'Glad to see Kathy blogging again', it's because she stopped blogging in 2007 after getting severely harassed online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment
As someone who followed her previous blog 'Creating Passionate Users', I'm really glad she's back writing publicly - not so much for this particular post (which wasn't anything novel), but more that it means her scars have healed enough. Hope to see more posts from her soon!
- jmduke 13y agoWow, that's terrible. Was there something that instigated (not to imply that Kathy was somehow at fault) the harassment beyond "hurf durf there's a woman on the internet"?
- yareally 13y agoIt was never totally made clear what the people making the threats motives were, but most likely harassment because of her gender is considered the likely reason. http://onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-real-culprits-in-the-kathy-sierra-saga/ http://onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-...
- nthitz 13y agohttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html Weev has some curious quotes in this article “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!” and “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?”
- canadiancreed 13y agoYa that person needs a permanent stay in a rubber padded room. If they're not there already.
- sp332 13y agoHe's basically the least-sympathetic test case possible, but... the tech community is trying to set him free. For our own good. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6093468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6093468
- adamnemecek 13y agoYou do realize what's his 'profession' right?
- tlrobinson 13y agoWeev is currently in prison, so yeah pretty much, minus the padding. That said, the reasons for him being in prison are more disturbing than shit he's done over the years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#AT.26T_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#AT.26T_data_breach
- bkmartin 13y agoI see he has a cozy little room just up the road from my house. Allenwood low is an easy ride for a Federal Prison stay. So why is his reasons for incarceration more disturbing than the stuff he has done over the years? What I see is an intelligent guy, who could really do a lot of good if he could actually be civilly disobedient. But instead he chooses to go the antisocial way with some "moral highground". He played with fire, and he got burned. There are better, more respectful ways to be an activist and be an agent for change that would produce far more fruitful results.
- sp332 13y agoIt's disturbing because it's innocuous and downright common. AT&T published customer's personal information where they shouldn't have. Weev downloaded it, and he's the one in trouble? If you look at my link just below, you can see a lot of security researchers who are worried that this court decision just made their jobs illegal.
- msutherl 13y agoThis article is unreal.
- bishnu 13y agoWow this is appalling. Was it a large-scale campaign or was it all just weev? Disgusting.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- true_religion 13y agoFrom what I remember it was just one person who was very persistent, but she found it troubling enough to stop.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agotbh in the internet troll community, all it takes is one to start. A whole horde of trolling sheep will follow 'for teh lulz'.
- mdda 13y agoI'm as glad as anyone that Kathy starting to blog again - but she mentioned an important "My father died unexpectedly last week" in the middle of the piece. Hopefully, writing can be beneficial to both her (and to her audience that obviously appreciates the blog) in what are likely very difficult times. Best Wishes.
- dools 13y agoWhat isn't novel about this post?!
- wicknicks 13y agoThat sucks so much. I read her Design Patterns book when I was doing my undergrad in Electronics. The lessons in that book are somewhat of a 'commandment set' for me. Its terrible what she has gone through. Feels like hearing about a good teacher who went through a bad time. Glad she's back. Hope she continues. Very thoughtful and excellent article.
- benjaminwootton 13y agoME too. She's brilliant. Her blog was some of the most insightful work I've ever read - http://headrush.typepad.com/ http://headrush.typepad.com/
- amenonsen 13y agoI remember the harrassment incidents, but I had never read anything she had written before. Thanks for the link. As a former dog owner, I found the dog example in this article especially evocative, because I've seen what an effort it can be for dogs to sit still when they're told. (Minor aside: the extraordinary overuse of emphasis made this article much harder to read.)
- jwise0 13y agoOne of the interesting things to notice is the title. HN usually has a fairly strict policy: the title of the link is what it is from the original post, without much modification (unless needed to make it clear). A post should stand on its own, without the author's name, ideally... My initial reaction, I confess, was feeling that the submitter was attempting to discredit the author -- or otherwise, to separate the world of UX research -- by calling attention to her identity as a woman. I still am not sure I believe that Kathy's name should be present -- I think it has the potential to do more harm than it is of use to readers -- but I now understand why it's there. Thanks for posting this explanation.
- callmeed 13y agoCrap, I didn't know she went to Cal Poly ... Go Mustangs!
- gadders 13y agoIt really annoys me that the people that hassled her before are walking around somewhere. They really need some bad karma to happen to them.
- efdee 13y agoEverytime you hear someone say "FREE WEEV"... This is the guy.
- nagrom 13y agoThe implication from your post is that Weev is bad and therefore deserves to be locked up. No-one (I think) wants to free Weev because they're sympathetic to him and think he's a great guy. They want to free him because the legal and social precedent set by his incarceration is dangerous to everyone. It's not enough to say that so-and-so is bad and should be clearly locked up. You (should) need to prove that he contravened an already-stated law, wilfully. The minute that slips from the standard, everyone is exposed.
- gadders 13y agoI'm conflicted about that. He definitely deserves to be in jail, just not for what he is imprisoned for.
- yeahrightdbag 13y agoWhat exactly does he deserve to be in jail for?
- VLM 13y agoBasically, not being civilized. Animals DO belong in cages, for the sake of civilization. I'm talking about the weird, crazy harassment stories, assuming they're true of course. It inhumane to punish even animals for ridiculous illogical stuff, like, say, accessing a public website. Here I'm talking about AT&Ts security epic fail where they had to blame someone for their mistake...