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Ask HN: Why are hackers today so insecure?
Reading through HN's headlines it is hard not to notice that most discussion is generated around countless "threats". The government, the NSA, piracy, patent trolls, banks, other countries' governments, big corporations, etc., etc., etc. This is not what one would expect from a creative community. A hacker is supposedly someone who is enlightened about the power of their own creativity. If you are focused on creating something, none of these "threats" would matter. So what's the reason for attributing so much power to these external "forces", none of which have ANY intrinsic power beyond what you give them?
- onion2k 13y agoThe very creativity you mention is what gives hackers the insight to understand the potential, and in some cases very real, impact of these threats to openness, freedom and equality. In the case of government, the NSA, even piracy to an extent, we can foresee a world where we are far less free to pursue the creative endeavours we love as the information currently gathered is used to stop 'terrorists', 'dissenters' and 'troublemakers'. As for patent trolls, banks and big corporations - they already stop people doing things that they enjoy by (ab)using 'rights management', lobbying and the courts to curtail our freedom to do things like reverse engineering, coding, and sharing. What you believe is a strange and impossible imaginary Dystopian scifi future, we see as something that, without careful opposition, could become a truly terrifying reality. Besides, hacking isn't just "making stuff". We can hack politics.
- jol 13y agoWith power comes responsibility, you should choose what to hack and why :)
- jiggy2011 13y agoThese things do have intrinsic power, they don't go away just because you ignore them.
- bmelton 13y agoI like the question, and I hope to hear more insightful answers than mine, which is more of a nit-pick than an actual answer. Government and NSA actually have power. They have it because we gave it to them. They have power because they have drones, tanks, guns, and armies of people willing to use them at their command. Refusing to recognize the authority of a government, even one you aren't a citizen of, even one whose borders you aren't within, seems naive at best. If the US government decides, tomorrow, to kill you, that isn't a threat that you can shrug off... or at least, not one that you can shrug off and expect to live a long life. Sure, perhaps government intervention won't interfere with my creation of something, but in many cases, that isn't even necessarily true. In order to succeed as a business, I have to obey the laws, or be subject to its retaliation. I can't ignore paying taxes, or obtaining appropriate license, or cease and desisting when the FDA tells me to, etc. Pretending that it doesn't exist isn't really an option.
- frou_dh 13y agoA large portion of the userbase is likely more tech news junkie than hacker. Everyone knows about this site - it's not an elite clubhouse.
- bananacurve 13y agoI suppose a fair amount can be attributed to the fluorescent tan. Little sunlight or fresh air. I found it hard to switch to the office lifestyle and frequently go for walks even in bad weather for relief. I think hackers that make physical things are happier in general due purely to the physicality.
- jbrooksuk 13y agoI personally feel threatened by the community. It's almost cut throat.
- collyw 13y agoCan you explain why?
- jbrooksuk 13y agoEssentially, for me, it boils down to not being able to keep up. Unless you know every new toolset, you're almost redundant. You stand little chance of being hired by a successful startup or the next Google/Dropbox. It's as if new toolsets are being produced to actually slow the majority of people down.
- realag 13y agoIt's better than all of the bitcoin crap.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoBeing creative in a society that values conformity is itself a place of insecurity.
- ryanthejuggler 13y agoOne example: Secure Boot (a.k.a. Restricted Boot). Personally, I'd love to have a screamin' Arch Linux install running Gnome Shell on top of the latest Microsoft Surface hardware. But I can't do that, can I? Why not? The simple answer is because Microsoft disallows you from modifying hardware that you own. This is a very real power. I personally do not have the capability to produce my own hardware. The more complicated answer is that the big guns (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc) have manipulated the government into allowing them these powers. So now we don't just have a technological problem, but a social problem. When we have an entire society of people running to the store asking them to put the glossy digital handcuffs on them, we encourage that kind of behavior. We make it economically viable for a corporation to oppress a large number of people. Circling back to my original point, this makes it difficult or impossible for someone to hack on a new hardware platform that's been locked down. Imagine if there were a ban on the color green. Artists would be completely deprived of a large part of their pallette, and their art would suffer for it. Tivoized hardware hurts hackers in exactly the same way. This is the first example that came to mind, there are definitely plenty of others. Basically it boils down to societal problems that manifest themselves as technology.
- wmgries 13y agoWhy can't you just disable Secure Boot from the UEFI? http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/how-to-use-the-bios-uefi http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-serv...
- bananacurve 13y agoBecause then you can't complain about what a horrible world it is with Google and Apple "oppressing" customers. Some people can only complain.
- forgottenpass 13y agoBecause the link you provided is for Surface PRO, and specific to the x86 offering. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Secure_boot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Secure_boot Microsoft's certification requirements eventually revealed that UEFI firmware on x86 systems must allow users to re-configure or turn off secure boot, but that this must not be possible on ARM-based systems (Windows RT).
- Aqueous 13y agoIt's the libertarian mindset. It is more hyper-vigilant and suspicious than the liberal mindset. You'll find that left-leaning people and right-leaning people have, at a very basic level, a different philosophy about other people. Left-leaning people are more trusting, right-leaning people are more suspicious. Left-leaning people want to help people out a little bit in a systematic way, right-leaning people want everyone to be self-reliant. There's something to be said for both views though. The problem is that everyone is right. You can't trust everyone but you have to trust someone. Terrorism is not the end of the world but it isn't a non-problem either. You can't let everyone sit around all day and not work but you also can't let them starve while working to death for low wages, either, or die of an illness they can't afford to treat. I think the fundamental lie of adversarial democracy is that we can't both be right at the same time. We are all a little bit right, but none of us can see that because we get hung up on relatively minor differences.
- Doctor_Fegg 13y agoSome of us are left-leaning hackers, thanks!
- Aqueous 13y agoCount me among you, but I'm also a rabid hoarder of BitCoins, so something in me must be a little libertarian.
- MartinCron 13y agoAre you hoarding, prospecting, or investing?
- Aqueous 13y agoMostly hoarding/investing, but some times I put me prospecting goggles on and head out for the BitCoin hills!
- lukifer 13y agoSome of us are left-leaning libertarians [1]; equally suspicious of the the concentrated power of the state and the concentrated power of private capital and corporations. Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. (Curiously, the reverse is also true, and I suspect that's what OP is reacting to.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1rK4PsP0zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1rK4PsP0zY
- sp332 13y agoThey charge hackers with crimes and lock them up. How can that threat not matter? Jacob Appelbaum has been detained 12 times at US airports and he still finds it stressful. The mental environment that this creates for traveling is intense. Nothing is assured, nothing is secure, and nothing provides escape. http://boingboing.net/2011/01/12/wikileaks-volunteer-1.html http://boingboing.net/2011/01/12/wikileaks-volunteer-1.html
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- computer 13y ago> If you are focused on creating something, none of these "threats" would matter. I suspect many of those who care about such things care about creating a better society, a better world.
- tvanantwerp 13y agoWhatever you think of him, I think Julian Assange answers this question quite well in the introduction to Cypherpunks: "The platonic nature of the internet, ideas and information flows, is debased by its physical origins. Its foundations are fiber optic cable lines stretching across the ocean floors, satellites spinning above our heads, computer servers housed in buildings in cities from New York to Nairobi. Like the soldier who slew Archimedes with a mere sword, so too could an armed militia take control of the peak development of Western civilization, our platonic realm. "The new world of the internet, abstracted from the old world of brute atoms, longed for independence. But states and their friends moved to control our new world -- by controlling its physical underpinnings. The state, like an army around an oil well, or a customs agent extracting bribes at the border, would soon learn to leverage its control of physical space to gain control over our platonic realm. It would prevent the independence we had dreamed of, and then, squatting on fiber optic lines and around satellite ground stations, it would go on to mass intercept the information flow of our new world -- its very essence even as every human, economic, and political relationship embraced it. The state would leech into the veins and arteries of our new societies, gobbling up every relationship expressed or communicated, every web page read, every message sent and every thought googled, and then store this knowledge, billions of interceptions a day, undreamed of power, in vast top secret warehouses, forever. It would go on to mine and mine again this treasure, the collective private intellectual output of humanity, with ever more sophisticated search and pattern finding algorithms, enriching the treasure and maximizing the power imbalance between interceptors and the world of interceptees. And then the state would reflect what it had learned back into the physical world, to start wars, to target drones, to manipulate UN committees and trade deals, and to do favors for its vast connected network of industries, insiders and cronies." http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm
- MartinCron 13y agoIn your list of things that hackers are insecure about you forgot women and their white knights coming in to ruin their precious traditionally male space with their inclusive pronouns and draconian prohibition on immature dick jokes in professional settings. If something is helpful to women in tech, it has to be harmful to men, right?
- Glide 13y agoExcept that they do have power even if you ignore them. I don't think anyone can argue that environment is not vital to a persons's development. The government, NSA, piracy, patent trolls, etc. all happen to be a part of the environment that we're in. In fact, many other things happen to be a part of that environment and have a more direct impact on children and their development. One example would be something like this: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/11/entertainment/la-et-ct-piracy-education-20131111 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/11/entertainment/la-et-... . I'm neither condoning or accepting of piracy in this statement, I'm only stating that the MPAA is a part of the environment and it affecting education. Then we can take a look at some of the "cultural" (I am lacking in words at this moment) factors that are in government when watching some of Lawrence Lessig's talks about removing the influence of money from government. Because of that influence of money corporations can influence legislation which can fundamentally change the rules that the market abides by. An example of this would be reverse engineering. Without which, I might add, the computing market would look dramatically different today. Or does no one still remember the thing with DVD players? I know I had to pony up in order to play Blu-Ray(R or TM) on my computer. Those kinds of headlines one _should_ expect from a community. A community should seek to protect itself and inform its members of threats both real and imagined. If I don't see any articles about threats in the future I'm going to think I'm in some kind of dystopia and they've managed to infiltrate HN.
- IvyMike 13y ago> So what's the reason for attributing so much power to these external "forces", none of which have ANY intrinsic power beyond what you give them? I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. Some of those "forces" which you condescendingly put in quotes have actual armed forces behind them. When your adversary is a foreign government, they have very real power that had absolutely nothing to do with your consent.
- bananacurve 13y agoI like how this post is being flagged by insecure hackers.
- gopher1 13y agoWhy does discussing news stories about threats make us insecure? Why do threats not matter if we're creating something (and for that matter even if you don't create things)? Why should creative communities not discuss threats? If we give these threats the power they have, should we not discuss them? You're making a lot of assumptions here...
- badman_ting 13y agoA rather tendentious question. You may choose to ignore it, but those forces have power nonetheless. You may not be interested in them, but they are interested in you. Marking it down to "insecurity" is just bizarre
- joslin01 13y agoWhat a stupid paragraph to read through. No seriously, what a stupid paragraph to read through. > Reading through HN's headlines it is hard not to notice that most discussion is generated around countless "threats". Why did you put quotes around threats? You seem to imply that the NSA, piracy, patent trolls, banks, other countries' governments [and how they integrate with ours], and big corporations do not warrant our awareness. In fact, you don't even believe they are threats apparently by your continued use of quotation marks. > A hacker is supposedly someone who is enlightened about the power of their own creativity. If you are focused on creating something, none of these "threats" would matter. Where did you discover the following rules? (a) a hacker is an enlightened creator (b) when focused on creative pursuits, threats do not matter Could you prove them for me? If not, then why do you use them as reasonable premises for your concluding argument? In fact, you might have an easier time arguing that a creator is more highly aware of threat because they don't want to see everything they worked for go to waste. Programmers naturally become skeptics; not because they want to get down on people but because they immediately look for the holes in the logic. Because, um, it's our job!! Are you surprised when you meet a compassionate nurse? How about a sly politician? No? Then maybe you're starting to get it. The lens we see through the world through is different than the nurses's, and so we have our own stance on say, the NSA, or Obama's re-election, or congress shutting down, or any other human event that takes place. It makes sense that we would use this community to talk about that outlook amongst other fellow craftsmen who have the same kinda lens. Some, not all, care what's happening around us. We're not this fantastical creative hacker secluded from society. The idea that we are, coupled with the idea that we shouldn't be concerned with threats, is insulting. It puts us in a box and gives rise to the "us vs them" attitude. Whether you idolize us or demonize us, you miss the underlying fact that we're humans too. >So what's the reason for attributing so much power to these external "forces", none of which have ANY intrinsic power beyond what you give them? Now for the grand-daddy of stupidity. Apparently the NSA and any other big world power is just an external force that doesn't have any intrinsic power besides what we give it! I forgot! You're not stupid enough to believe this, I know this. You're just saying it to give greater power to your already weak argument that hackers are insecure. This is a very intelligent, progressive, and open-minded community. We regularly debate things in a way congress wishes it did. You have the audacity to put us in a box, call us insecure, stamp a cute label "enlightened hacker", and question why we should ever be concerned about politics. Get the hell out of here with that nonsense. I'll say it again: we're humans too. We're allowed to have other interests besides programming (though at times I wish my boss knew that!).
- dear 13y agoThat is because all these threats are trying to kill creativity.
- nswanberg 13y agoThis essay answers the question amazingly well: http://paulgraham.com/gba.html http://paulgraham.com/gba.html What is sad here is not that those subjects are discussed but the sometimes fearful and shrill tone in which they are discussed. Sadder still is that there are a lot of comments on HN that seem just as afraid of hacks like Soylent or Bitcoin or AirBnb.
- forgottenpass 13y agoOther people have already made better critiques of your post. I find it to be a hollow assertion based on multiple inaccurate assumptions, but I want to focus narrowly on one point that I don't think anyone else has addressed yet. So what's the reason for attributing so much power to these external "forces", none of which have ANY intrinsic power beyond what you give them? You seem to be playing fast and loose with the distinction between "you" meaning me as an individual and "you" meaning a society that includes myself. I, personally, don't necessarily give the NSA any power. Unless you're saying that apathy in a democracy does give them power. But therein lies the switch from individual to collective "you". If I alone dedicated my entire life to removing their intrinsic power, I still wouldn't be able to remove it's power. Snowden threw away his life to try and remove the power behind the NSA. He was uniquely positioned to challenge their power and only managed to get egg on their face and start public discourse. Societal things like this necessitate discussion, because that's the only way the power drawn from a large number of people can work to counter that power acting towards it's natural incentives. Or are you going to argue that because I am able to to completely withdraw from society and live in a cabin in the woods I'm opting into the power exerted by governments and corporations? By that logic my continued decisions not to commit suicide are approval of whatever government rule happens to be the status quo. Rhetorical power of death aside, I do find that to be both quite true and utterly irrelevant to a conversation on the type of world I'd like to live in beyond the barest of bare minimums.
- eliteraspberrie 13y agoI agree with your premise that those powers have very little power beyond what is surrendered to them. For example, creativity has almost solved the problem of dragnet surveillance, through inventions such as public key cryptography, anonymous remailers, onion routing, and so on. (Although one must opt in to those solutions at the moment.) However, the asymmetrical advantage of creativity vanishes in the case of targeted power. A creative individual doesn't stand a chance against the smallest application of power -- brute force wins over intellect. This is an open problem, that perhaps doesn't have any solutions. My understanding is that most "threats" you mentioned are using the tactic of isolating individuals from the aggregate, because it is then that power is an advantage. Hence, endpoint hacking has taken the place of cracking ciphers, with metadata/social network analysis being a means to this end. Just as important as creativity is a positive outlook. There are still discoveries and inventions to be made. Hackers should not get discouraged, stay optimistic, and get to work.
- entendre 13y agoI used to go tour Williamsburg as a child. I used to love the shot towers and the tricorns and the proximity to the beach. I used to love the ferrier and the the legislators and the town harlot. I had been to jamestown and I had been to my own family's homestead which predated Williamsburg and their delicious recreation of a duck potpie. I respected Jamestown and I like to think even as a child I knew the recreation for what it was, the type of people who'd be there and yes, I too, would rather be wearing a uniform and protecting ponies on assiteague but creative anachronism at jamestown pays better because more people want to visit pocohontas than get yelled at for swimming with horses. I guess my point is hackers are like ren faire workers these days. the problems are and have always been people not who works for them.