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Instrumental in this message for me was this part: There is no honour amongst hackers any more. 10-20 years back a term hacker had a close relation to a certa

by znowi 13y ago

Instrumental in this message for me was this part: There is no honour amongst hackers any more. 10-20 years back a term hacker had a close relation to a certain moral conduct emphasizing freedom of knowledge. Today with a mass market of startups, that was largely popularized by Hacker News, this perception has changed. A hacker now is a founder. He must be good at raising money, monetizing a product and the greatest feat of all - exit. There's no more moral obligations of the past. Launch at all cost - the rest is an afterthought. There's a discrepancy between the two cultures. I think this divide is the source of the mailing-list problem and problems with freedom of information and privacy at large we have today.

deleted 13y ago
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deleted 13y ago
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FiloSottile 13y ago
Here you are speaking about the two different meanings of hacker, security-hacker and startup-hacker. Yes, there is a big difference, and you described it. But it's not the point. Full-disclosure is all of security-hackers. And the sad thing is that there is no more honour amongst security-hackers. In the 90s they used to share 0-days. Today, well if you don't sell it you're a fool. I'm so sad I missed that period, IRC, the lulz. Don't confuse the hacker spirit with the hacker word.
- supersystem 13y ago
  The "startup-hacker" doesn't really exist. It's just a label for people who can't necessarily identify with being a businessperson.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
>>> 10-20 years back a term hacker had a close relation to a certain morale conduct emphasizing freedom of knowledge. Agreed. There was a certain "code" people adhered to. Even groups like LOD wouldn't release exploits because they feared people would use them for nefarious purposes.
- tptacek 13y ago
  This is batshit revisionist bullshit. Anyone who close-held an exploit did so to keep the bug alive longer. People routinely burned exploits when they found their rivals using them, not by alerting vendors but by circulating exploit code on #hack
- mzs 13y ago
  Rather especially LOD, LOD circa kicking out TM and the war with MOD was more the exception than the rule.
- pea 13y ago
  Yeah but blackhats ala lod / h0no / el8 routinely released exploits that were leaked or stolen. They just hated full-disclosure with a passion as they saw it as too corporate.
- roel_v 13y ago
  8/ Not sure what you're referring to here... Although gobbles is the only 'organized' (to use that term loosely) full disclosure group from that era that I remember off the cuff, plenty of people posted their (working) exploit code to even 'respectable' lists as bugtraq, not to mention people copy and pasting exploits to IRC the minute they had it working. Any I'm not even talking about joe schmoe's abandoned sourceforge project either - wuftpd had exploits posted and thousands of people got defaced in the hours/days after such a release, complete with defacing archives to keep score (yes I realize the exploit writers weren't usually the defacers). In short, in the 1990's there were huge amounts of full disclosure, and even those trying to work with vendors were usually snubbed by those vendors. It was a completely different landscape.
noname123 13y ago
Yes. This is true. I posted something similar circa 2009 about this sentiment. It used to bother me a lot but not anymore. A reply from pg on the different cultures: pg 1678 days ago | link Everything you've written would have been just as true in the 1980s, with a few of the names changed. Then too there were authentic hackers, glib fakers, and corporate drones. The great majority of the computer world in the 1980s was profoundly unsubversive. The smart, subversive people were a tiny minority. They seem a larger proportion when you look back from 30 years later, because the fakers and PHBs had no lasting effects. 10 years from now, who is going to remember Marc Andreessen or Paul Graham? Besides some true hacker enthusiast ironically, who remembers Andressen's work on Netscape. In my original post in 2009, I mentioned the hot founder celebrities back then, Carol Bartz (fired), Seth Godin (pumping out more irrelevant books listed further down on Amazon) and Timothy Ferris (moved on from 4-hour "founding" to 4-hour body-building and cooking). I think in the early nineties, when Linus Torvald first pushed out Linux on the listserv. We had OS/2 Warp and Windows 3.0 preview and Microsoft Bob. Borland, WordPerfect, Lotus 123 running on MS-DOS were the kings. Do you guys remember who founded or worked on those? The people who hack on stuff will always be there because money & fame didn't motivate them in the first place.
- username223 13y ago
  > glib fakers, and corporate drones. Truly PG's lack of self-awareness (or cynical dishonesty) is mind-boggling.
- lobo_tuerto 13y ago
  It reminds me of some lines along those found in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE_XGtUNx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE_XGtUNx4 (Wear Sunscreen)
- ganeumann 13y ago
  Paul Graham wrote "On Lisp." If ever a book was written by a true hacker, that one is it, and it will be read as long as there are programmable computers.
  - 13y ago
tptacek 13y ago
I don't even know how to respond to the idea that teenagers breaking into phone switches and harassing people, buying Pantera CDs on stolen credit cards, stealing ESNs from other people's phones to make calls on someone else's bill, and rm'ing Unix boxes are somehow more honorable than adults running businesses. The "hackers" FD's moderator is talking about are the ones I'm talking about. They aren't MIT students ordering sweet and sour bitter melon.
- Zancarius 13y ago
  > are somehow more honorable than adults running businesses. Gotta admit, I thought the same thing. Then I'm reminded of patent and trademark law...
  - tptacek 13y ago
    What about it? Patent and trademark law are two things the typical valley "hacker" acutely oppose.
    - guelo 13y ago
      Bullshit. I haven't seen one supposed startup hacker put up a fight once the "grownups", investors, and lawyers start telling them they have to patent something. The only Silicon Valley moral is making money.
      - Zancarius 13y ago
        It's curious how well your comment fits with the article this discussion is over, because I think that's the underlying problem. It's no longer about fundamentally "hacker" interests as much as it is about financial gain, influence, legalities, and gobs of other rubbish.
- lawnchair_larry 13y ago
  Sounds like somebody wasn't in the cool kids group.
runjake 13y ago
I am totally confused by your comment. A "hacker" in the context of the Full Disclosure list is a completely different thing than what "hacker" means in the context of Hacker News. It's at best trying to compare a painter that does portraits to a painter that paints automobiles. Both require skills, but in completely different areas.
jessaustin 13y ago
HN folks have taken an interest in ESR recently, so here's his recent take on this topic wrt Weev: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5492 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5492
- jff 13y ago
  Good lord, that man is full of himself.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    That's part [most?] of his appeal! b^)
steele 13y ago
The hackers referred to in the post and the hackers you're referring to... well, tramps aren't always tramps.
f- 13y ago
I've been active in the infosec community for ~18 years, probably as one of its more prolific members at times - and similarly to Thomas, I'm not really sure I buy this argument. I don't want to cross-post the entire thing, but here are my thoughts in response to similar posts on /r/netsec: http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/20sxd2/full_disclosure_mailing_list_closes/cg6wfjm http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/20sxd2/full_disclosu...
666c6f 13y ago
That is the point. We should stop calling founders and businessmen hackers. A hacker is a person dedicated to technology and freedom. A silent hero, fighting everyday against against oppression, law and order. A person whose sole interest is keeping information free and accessible to everyone. Maybe he is not the best guy in socializing and communicating his interests and maybe some hackers are doing pranks and breaking your phone switches. But these are the people who are the front line the only ones who are willing to carry the fight for freedom and equality into the internet and against the people who are now calling themselves "Hackers". Businessmen, lawyers and founders all those people which interests are to make money and obey. YOU silicon valley guys aren't hackers anymore. you have become the mass you have sold your ambitions. I'm going to shed a tear now for all of you. Hacking is about rebellion hacking is keeping the internet free of scum like fascists and governments Hacking is the way of autonomous thinking. Hacking is keeping freedom in your heart and helping the oppressed. Hacking is so much more then "finding the best way to optimize your workflow" this is what a hacker stands for https://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration https://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barl...

by znowi 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

FiloSottile 13y ago

Here you are speaking about the two different meanings of hacker, security-hacker and startup-hacker. Yes, there is a big difference, and you described it. But it's not the point. Full-disclosure is all of security-hackers. And the sad thing is that there is no more honour amongst security-hackers. In the 90s they used to share 0-days. Today, well if you don't sell it you're a fool. I'm so sad I missed that period, IRC, the lulz. Don't confuse the hacker spirit with the hacker word.

supersystem 13y ago
The "startup-hacker" doesn't really exist. It's just a label for people who can't necessarily identify with being a businessperson.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

>>> 10-20 years back a term hacker had a close relation to a certain morale conduct emphasizing freedom of knowledge. Agreed. There was a certain "code" people adhered to. Even groups like LOD wouldn't release exploits because they feared people would use them for nefarious purposes.

tptacek 13y ago
This is batshit revisionist bullshit. Anyone who close-held an exploit did so to keep the bug alive longer. People routinely burned exploits when they found their rivals using them, not by alerting vendors but by circulating exploit code on #hack
mzs 13y ago
Rather especially LOD, LOD circa kicking out TM and the war with MOD was more the exception than the rule.
pea 13y ago
Yeah but blackhats ala lod / h0no / el8 routinely released exploits that were leaked or stolen. They just hated full-disclosure with a passion as they saw it as too corporate.
roel_v 13y ago
8/ Not sure what you're referring to here... Although gobbles is the only 'organized' (to use that term loosely) full disclosure group from that era that I remember off the cuff, plenty of people posted their (working) exploit code to even 'respectable' lists as bugtraq, not to mention people copy and pasting exploits to IRC the minute they had it working. Any I'm not even talking about joe schmoe's abandoned sourceforge project either - wuftpd had exploits posted and thousands of people got defaced in the hours/days after such a release, complete with defacing archives to keep score (yes I realize the exploit writers weren't usually the defacers). In short, in the 1990's there were huge amounts of full disclosure, and even those trying to work with vendors were usually snubbed by those vendors. It was a completely different landscape.

noname123 13y ago

Yes. This is true. I posted something similar circa 2009 about this sentiment. It used to bother me a lot but not anymore. A reply from pg on the different cultures: pg 1678 days ago | link Everything you've written would have been just as true in the 1980s, with a few of the names changed. Then too there were authentic hackers, glib fakers, and corporate drones. The great majority of the computer world in the 1980s was profoundly unsubversive. The smart, subversive people were a tiny minority. They seem a larger proportion when you look back from 30 years later, because the fakers and PHBs had no lasting effects. 10 years from now, who is going to remember Marc Andreessen or Paul Graham? Besides some true hacker enthusiast ironically, who remembers Andressen's work on Netscape. In my original post in 2009, I mentioned the hot founder celebrities back then, Carol Bartz (fired), Seth Godin (pumping out more irrelevant books listed further down on Amazon) and Timothy Ferris (moved on from 4-hour "founding" to 4-hour body-building and cooking). I think in the early nineties, when Linus Torvald first pushed out Linux on the listserv. We had OS/2 Warp and Windows 3.0 preview and Microsoft Bob. Borland, WordPerfect, Lotus 123 running on MS-DOS were the kings. Do you guys remember who founded or worked on those? The people who hack on stuff will always be there because money & fame didn't motivate them in the first place.

username223 13y ago
> glib fakers, and corporate drones. Truly PG's lack of self-awareness (or cynical dishonesty) is mind-boggling.
lobo_tuerto 13y ago
It reminds me of some lines along those found in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE_XGtUNx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE_XGtUNx4 (Wear Sunscreen)
ganeumann 13y ago
Paul Graham wrote "On Lisp." If ever a book was written by a true hacker, that one is it, and it will be read as long as there are programmable computers.
- 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

I don't even know how to respond to the idea that teenagers breaking into phone switches and harassing people, buying Pantera CDs on stolen credit cards, stealing ESNs from other people's phones to make calls on someone else's bill, and rm'ing Unix boxes are somehow more honorable than adults running businesses. The "hackers" FD's moderator is talking about are the ones I'm talking about. They aren't MIT students ordering sweet and sour bitter melon.

Zancarius 13y ago
> are somehow more honorable than adults running businesses. Gotta admit, I thought the same thing. Then I'm reminded of patent and trademark law...
- tptacek 13y ago
  What about it? Patent and trademark law are two things the typical valley "hacker" acutely oppose.
  - guelo 13y ago
    Bullshit. I haven't seen one supposed startup hacker put up a fight once the "grownups", investors, and lawyers start telling them they have to patent something. The only Silicon Valley moral is making money.
    - Zancarius 13y ago
      It's curious how well your comment fits with the article this discussion is over, because I think that's the underlying problem. It's no longer about fundamentally "hacker" interests as much as it is about financial gain, influence, legalities, and gobs of other rubbish.
lawnchair_larry 13y ago
Sounds like somebody wasn't in the cool kids group.

runjake 13y ago

I am totally confused by your comment. A "hacker" in the context of the Full Disclosure list is a completely different thing than what "hacker" means in the context of Hacker News. It's at best trying to compare a painter that does portraits to a painter that paints automobiles. Both require skills, but in completely different areas.

jessaustin 13y ago

HN folks have taken an interest in ESR recently, so here's his recent take on this topic wrt Weev: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5492 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5492

jff 13y ago
Good lord, that man is full of himself.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  That's part [most?] of his appeal! b^)

steele 13y ago

The hackers referred to in the post and the hackers you're referring to... well, tramps aren't always tramps.

f- 13y ago

I've been active in the infosec community for ~18 years, probably as one of its more prolific members at times - and similarly to Thomas, I'm not really sure I buy this argument. I don't want to cross-post the entire thing, but here are my thoughts in response to similar posts on /r/netsec: http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/20sxd2/full_disclosure_mailing_list_closes/cg6wfjm http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/20sxd2/full_disclosu...

666c6f 13y ago

That is the point. We should stop calling founders and businessmen hackers. A hacker is a person dedicated to technology and freedom. A silent hero, fighting everyday against against oppression, law and order. A person whose sole interest is keeping information free and accessible to everyone. Maybe he is not the best guy in socializing and communicating his interests and maybe some hackers are doing pranks and breaking your phone switches. But these are the people who are the front line the only ones who are willing to carry the fight for freedom and equality into the internet and against the people who are now calling themselves "Hackers". Businessmen, lawyers and founders all those people which interests are to make money and obey. YOU silicon valley guys aren't hackers anymore. you have become the mass you have sold your ambitions. I'm going to shed a tear now for all of you. Hacking is about rebellion hacking is keeping the internet free of scum like fascists and governments Hacking is the way of autonomous thinking. Hacking is keeping freedom in your heart and helping the oppressed. Hacking is so much more then "finding the best way to optimize your workflow" this is what a hacker stands for https://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration https://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barl...