Hacker News Reader

Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

He named his BBS "TacoLand". He should definitely play up this angle...maybe campaign on a taco cart on every corner. I know people who will vote for him for that alone.

This piece is a disaster. It's an excerpt from a soon to be released book, it's light on facts about O'Rourke and is at least equally about Cult of the Dead Cow, it's trying to make things sound more nefarious than they were, and it's playing the guilt by association card. The only questionable activities by O'Rourke are:

- he dialed long distance without paying for it.

- he used pirated software.

(Not that I'm defending this behavior, but so did I.)

And he wrote fiction that barely rises to the level of a really bad Stephen King'esque short story.

That's it.

View on HN

>it's trying to make things sound more nefarious than they were, and it's playing the guilt by association card

Are we reading the same article? If anything this article seems like a submarine PR puff piece to me, made to increase the image of Beto by making him seem "cool" and "hip" by associating him with the typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene. This article is very similar to the pro-Beto stuff that was all over Texas during his senate campaign.

We are in a world where the exact same video of Beto skateboarding was posted by both opponents and supporters and each saw what they wanted in it.

I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate. Recall that “hacking” was a bit of a problem in 2016.

Fox News: "Young Beto O'Rourke wrote 'murder fantasy' about running over children, was part of famed hacking group: report"

CNET: "Beto O'Rourke has serious hacker credentials. The presidential candidate was a member of hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow"

WaPo: "'Psychedelic Warlord': Beto O'Rourke's past life as a teenage hacker" and "Beto O’Rourke’s hacking universe, explained."

Sources:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/beto-orourke-wrote-murder-f...

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/beto-orourke-has-seriou...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/psychedelic-wa...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/15/beto-orou...

I thought you made these headlines up to show how the same news might hypothetically be presented by different outlets and thought you got them pretty spot on. Then I saw the sources. What a sad world we live in.

You forgot buzzfeed ... you won't believe the ten things Beto O'Rourke did to win the White House.

There's another side of that "hacking was a bit of a problem in 2016" - namely that tech savvy politicians are in short supply[1]. Associating Beto with a well known hacker group boosts his credibility wrt tech.

[1] particularly when combined with tonedeaf and heavy handed legislation/regulation about the internet.

This will be an interesting conversation (tech savvy vs tech dumb) to play out this round.

The current president argued during his campaign that the problems with the country arose from "bad deals" and his experience and expertise at "deal making" was the solution to this problem.

Beto might argue during his campaign that the problems with the country arise from unacknowledged cyber warfare in both social media and voting systems. He could then argue that he is uniquely qualified to lead the government to a more solid footing in that regard and protect the democracy.

Both are simplistic arguments of the form problem is X, I'm an expert in X, I can lead a group to fix X.

Opponents will of course spin up the fear of X and especially if X can be used to achieve the goals of the proponent, try to paint them as being part of the problem not the solution.

Unlike the current administrations "Space" force, I could see a justification for a "Cyber" force if such a force provided protection against, and options for maneuver in an algorithmically generated battlefield.

We already have a "Cyber force", offensive operations legally fall under the overview of the D.o.D (Cyber Command & the NSA components (TAO)).

Only among people (as here) who have much greater than average tech knowledge, and probably a far more nuanced understanding of the various possible meanings of "hacker".

Elsewhere, the words "hacker" and "hacking" have an almost universally negative connotation.

>Only among people (as here) who have much greater than average tech knowledge

Which might be the whole point of this piece:

>But the political balance allows him to appeal to both main strands of political thought in Silicon Valley – a key source of campaign money and cultural influence.

> I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate

He’s a candidate in a primary. Big difference in the audiences.

> He’s a candidate in a primary. Big difference in the audiences.

The Democratic primary electorate is probably the segment of the population with the strongest negative impact around the 2016 election hacking that was evoked in the grandparent post, so while true your comment reinforces rather than negates the point.

It gives him at least a touch of credibility in a time where the Democratic primary voters increasingly turn on CSPAN to watch Congressional Committee hearings and watch as a vast majority of their 535 representatives butcher basic facts about technology that they internalized since teenagers. Given the rapid pace of technological development, I don't see this as a negative, assuming he didn't do anything more nefarious than phreak or pirate as a kid.

And he's just somebody new. Parties seem to have a tendency to wheel out old candidates who have tried and failed to get past the primaries multiple times already (thinking of Biden, in particular here, but that's just one example). Not sure why that is.

> Parties seem to have a tendency to wheel out old candidates

Parties don't wheel out candidates, candidates seek the party nomination. Candidates who have done so in the past and whose on-paper qualifications and public esteem have increased since then often remain inclined to do so and have a basis for expecting they might do better.

Many party voters are also inclined to vote for these candidates; some of these are long time supporters.

I'm more surprised that candidates whose resume includes only some local politics, a few terms in the House, and a failed Senate bid throw their hat in to the Presidential ring than that those that spent 36 years in the Senate and run for President twice before, serving for eight years as Vice President after his most recent Presidential run, do so.

Highly politicized voters tend to see things through a tribal lense: our tribe resists bad people with fists if necessary, their tribe does violence. Our leader has a freethinking stance to sex, their leader is sexual predator. There are of course a few of universally bad, and universally good things, but "hacker" certainly doesn't fall to these categories.

This sort of thing where both fans and haters have to talk about the same thing has been very good to AOC and Trump.

>I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate.

I agree with this. It seems an odd stance to take (assuming O'Rourke commissioned, or was at least okay with, this piece) given how other candidates are taking an explicitly hostile stance toward Big Tech. The media has done a fantastic job of convincing people that "election hacking" was a huge problem in 2016 (it wasn't), so it's curious why whatever consultant is working for this campaign decided this was good positioning.

From the article:

Still, it’s unclear whether the United States is ready for a presidential contender who, as a teenager, stole long-distance phone service for his dial-up modem, wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street, and mused about a society without money.

This doesn't read as very pro-Beto to me.

A single sentence in an otherwise glamorizing and embellishing article does not a anti-Beto piece make.

That sentence doesn't even read as not pro-Beto to me, either. It's more of a neutral "this guy is really cool, but is he cool enough?" rhetorical.

"wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street" doesn't sound particularly pro-Beto to me?

"Wrote a fantasy-novel equivalent of GTA", how about that?

It seems beto-safe to me. Of all the details in this story, this child death fiction no doubt required a strategic approach. It's the weirdest of the bunch and the sort of thing that an opponent would love.

In this case, it seems the best way to play it was to just cut to the chase. Summarize it as brutally as Trump could and just be the first to say it. Get it out there so that an opponent can't ride it's energy.

It depends on how it's it's spun. They could be trying to sell his cool "bad boy" image. Some polling research must have shown them this is appealing to enough voters and others are not paying too much attention. He already has the DUI thing and apparently wrote a fantasy novel about running over children with his car. So maybe they don't have much to lose and might as well go for the cool troublemaker / hacker thing.

It's unclear why the author of the article is unsure what type of president the US is ready for, right after they elected Donald Trump.

'typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene'? By who?

His association with At The Drive-In gives him more street cred than any tenuous relationship with hacking.

Society glamorizes hackers hard. Have you ever seen War Games? The Matrix? Live Free or Die Hard? Mr Robot? Blackhat? Any recent spy movie? What about the multitude of other movies/shows where hackers aren't the focus, but are certainly glamorized, a la NCIS, CSI, Limitless, etc. There's an entire genre of film & television about hackers and they are almost always portrayed as cool, attractive, powerful people with the world at their fingertips.

It's almost an exact copy-paste of the "spy / secret agent" mythos of the cold war.

They don't use their real names, they have gadgets and mysterious power, not from magic but from skill. They operate outside traditional power structures and governments, you don't know who's working for whom, and they never seem far from a trenchcoat.

I'm sad that you failed to mention the original /Hackers/ movie as well as /Swordfish/ -- two staples of Defcon movie nights.

Ah! I had Swordfish in mind but my brain blanked and I couldn't think of the name. For Hackers, I have no excuse.

Sneakers with Robert Redford

Yes! Another great classic Hacker flick.

Sneakers worked well because it had A-list actors playing up the social engineering aspect, which an A-list actor can do. It had comparatively little meditation on the hardware and technical aspects and from a plot and longevity perspective I think that was a particular strength of the movie.

> Society glamorizes hackers hard.

Hollywood glamorizes hackers, like violence, crime, rock n roll, space travel, and just about everything else hard.

At the risk of hyperbole, if society glamorized hackers hard, Aaron Swartz might still be with us.

This was what I was going to say. I'm not sure society itself has internalized Hollywood's glamorization of hackers, and the glamorization is more a product of trying to make something mundane seem more interesting in the context of a film.

... have you seen War Games?

You mean the movie where a quirky-but-lovable nerd garners the attention of an attractive and popular girl who is fascinated by his hacking abilities and then goes on to kiss the girl, outsmart the FBI, and save the entire world from nuclear annihilation by typing stuff into a computer terminal? That WarGames?

Yea, I've seen it.

War Games is what made me want to get a modem, back in the 80's!

This 100%. It's obviously tidying up a situation which could break bad in somebody else's hands.

Agreed. Beto’s biggest concern is the Dem primary, and his biggest criticism is being too centrist and status quo. Appearing to be ahead of the tech curve and walking the edge of hacker-disobedience makes him more palatable to his critics during the primary phase.

> He named his BBS "TacoLand".

It certainly wouldn't have been unusual for a young Beto O'Rourke (or any other Texan) to have tacos on his mind for any number of reasons, but "Taco Land" was the name of a punk bar in San Antonio. It was well known to Texas punks and their ilk and was immortalized by the Dead Milkmen in the late 80s by their song "Tacoland".

Indeed. "You'll understand, when you go on down to tacoland." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsDmUcvrCbI

This feels like someone trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill and link connections that really don't exist.

According to the article O'Rourke left the CDC boards turned 18 and went to college. He's 46, so we are talking 1989 or 1990.

The article then talks up all the Back Orifice/Hacktavism stuff which was a solid decade after he left. It's not like Beto's helping Virus and Sir Dystic write SMBRelay...

The article itself has Beto at Beyond HOPE in 1997.

Honestly the drunk driving was the worst takeaway from the story. Maybe he is the next Kennedy haha.

The fact that this is coming out so early in the presidential cycle is a good thing for him though. Lots of time for it to become old news. Lots of time for him to spin it. He seems to be good at spin.

Anyway this makes me respect him more.

Anyone know his handle btw?

Hah same for me. Though a politician who actually knows how to use a computer can probably do a lot more for democracy in the Senate than the oval office.

This was intentionally pushed by his campaign precisely for that reason - to get all the dirt out while they can control the spin. Better to burn the story now that he’s “just” a primary candidate.

Do you have evidence for that or are you guessing? (I have nothing against guessing, but I'd like to know when that's what people are doing)

I mean that would make sense but source?

The way it's stated, to me, indicates clear coordination: "Members of the group have protected O’Rourke’s secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged O’Rourke as one of their own. In all, more than a dozen members of the group agreed to be named for the first time in a book about the hacking group by this reporter that is scheduled to be published in June by Public Affairs. O’Rourke was interviewed early in his run for the Senate".

So the reporter interviewed him first then went to the other members, who somehow "flipped" uncharacteristically (unlike they had done before). The book will be published in June but the reporter decided to start banging the drum much earlier, which is more convenient for O'Rourke than for his sales (he's basically given all the good bits away already). If he wanted to maximize exposure and sales, he would have waited for the eve of a primary; like this, it helps O'Rourke get the dirt out early.

Speculation? I'd just call it realism.

Don't forget that he was also quite a wordsmith (NSFW) -

http://textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0050.txt

Warning: NSFW ^

(though cool, NSFW)

Taco Trucks on every corner. God I loved that quote. https://youtu.be/PzbusRK7YKM?t=360

Heres a TextFile listing his old BBS number if it is TacoLand:

http://www.textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0080.txt

Also whats up with textfiles.com having so many broken links on Google? So much for that whole "Archive Team" angle.

What are you talking about?

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/ -> COLLECTED COPIES OF BBS LISTS -> 404

That's the so many broken links? OK

Thats the most obvious I've several I've found but OK.

I can't even connect to textfiles.com at all right now.

I agree the piece isn't very informative and is very scattered. That being said, this is definitely the most questionable thing:

> "When he was younger, he was arrested on drunk-driving charges"

That will follow him into the campaign far more than his CDC membership.

That will certainly be brought up in the campaign, but it was brought up in his House races and the Senate race and didn't seem to have much of an impact.

> That will certainly be brought up in the campaign, but it was brought up in his House races and the Senate race and didn't seem to have much of an impact.

A very actively contested Presidential primary isn't the same thing as a House or Senate race, and he didn't win the Senate race, either.

That's true. I mostly meant that it isn't a new development, it's been in the news before.

It was a close race, and he lost. That seems like an impact.

A Democrat losing in a race in Texas isn't exactly a shocking development.

And he did significantly better than most people and polls expected he'd do. 3 points, getting more votes than Hillary and Obama in a midterm year through persuasion more than turnout.

This after that, therefore because of that-you say?

>> "When he was younger, he was arrested on drunk-driving charges"

>That will follow him into the campaign far more than his CDC membership.

Will it? It didn't hurt George W. Bush.

Admitting to smoking pot didn't hurt Obama.

And Donald Trump... Jesus wept, Donald Trump.

Smoking pot is not the same as endangering lives. Also Donald Trump doesn't drink, let-alone drink and drive.

There's few crimes that are more dangerous than drinking and driving.

The point is that these people all have incidents in their past which should, in theory, have hurt them politically, but which in practice, didn't.

And my point is not all past incidents are created equal. So it's hard to compare the effects.

Is being arrested for drunken driving materially different than having not been arrested while drunken driving?

And hasn’t pretty much almost anyone driven drunk at least once?

> And hasn’t pretty much almost anyone driven drunk at least once?

No...

By drunk I mean above the legal BAC. It’s pretty easy to have a few beers and be above the legal limit.

It's also pretty easy to have a few beers and not drive

I wouldn’t call it very easy. You drive to a place and have some beers. Then you have the choice of leaving your car or drive above the BAC. Most people choose the latter.

> I wouldn’t call it very easy

Yes it is.

> You drive to a place and have some beers.

It's quite easy to decide not to drive to a place if you are going to have a few beers over too short of a time to safely and legally drive home, or to choose not to have too many beers if you need to drive to and from the place.

To your second question, no. To your first — it seems likelier that Beto had more than one drunk driving occasion before the time he was arrested. The circumstances of his arrest don’t look the best for him, with one witness claiming he attempted to leave the scene of the accident: https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2018/sep/25/beto...

>And hasn’t pretty much almost anyone driven drunk at least once?

Not once ever. That's super irresponsible.

To be honest, I do think a little less of Beto for it. Is it enough to move a vote, probably not - but it's not helpful.

dialed long distance without paying for it.

In the right generation, isn't that practically a job requirement for a CSO?

> In the right generation, isn't that practically a job requirement for a CSO?

Which, were he applying for a job as a CSO, might be relevant.

> (Not that I'm defending this behavior, but so did I.)

Same. I bet every one of us in this thread did, too! At least the pirated software part.

I think "TacoLand" has a meaning that could be awkward.

The food can be a metaphor for genitalia or for the attached humans. For example a tacofest, much like a sausagefest, is a gathering in which one sex is greatly overrepresented compared to the other. Meat goes in a taco.

So, one can guess what was featured on his BBS.

This comment says more about you than Beto.

You can look up his textfiles if you want to see what was on the BBS.

He wrote this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20041214030544/http://www.cultde...

That at least somewhat supports my interpretation. I was thinking more along the lines of image files.

That he was an edgy teenager? Yeah.

Image files back in the 80s weren't super common because everybody was on slow dialup and had crappy CGA graphics. There was a fair bit of risque ANSI crawls from groups like ACID and ICE, but they were usually too artistic to be considered just porn.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com