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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

The general demeanor of that person, some of the lingo used like "rooting" or "federal server hijacking", the fact that in the screenshot he's using some text editor with ads in it to browse the offending code combined with the fact that he doesn't know what Curl is (if he did he wouldn't have sent this e-mail) screams "script kiddie" to me.

I'm not sure whether this person is actually responsible for a multi-million dollar defense project, but if he really was, it's probably a good thing he lost the deal because I definitely don't want that kind of person managing such a project.

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We are dealing with a person with mental illness, because nothing is coherent. It's all made up. That's why you don't answer that kind of mail, the goal is to trigger a reaction from you.

> It's all made up.

I think its the opposite, I think its an unqualified contractor writing code he doesn't understand for complex systems and was subsequently hacked. I see this a lot with people bidding on contracts then hiring staff/developers after it's awarded to duct tape a system together that barely works and is full of holes.

I'm personally not very well-known, but I work for someone who is, and on a project that gets quite a lot of attention because of it. It's surprisingly common that people show up with extraordinary and incoherent stories. Given the author's name and email address are plastered all over, it is not surprising that such people would find him too.

An article was shared here a while ago that went into that as well: https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/

(Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22280753)

This. The world is full of incompetent people winging it, and the competent ones are busy putting out the fires they left behind. It takes 3000 years to build a Ming-vase, but only a kid playing soccer to destroy it. Making a mess is a low effort endeavour. Cleaning it up, might as well be 1/99 of your lifetime. Tech projects are asymmetric warfare between the business side supporting the "cheapest" project approach and engineers allowed to clean it up properly only after the sunken cost fallacy trapped the clueless.

This is the sort of magical thinking that can be a symptom of paranoia, the unfortunate combination of extreme anxiety and a disengagement from realistic thinking. The person clearly does not know what Curl does and simply lashed out like a wounded animal at the first thing that caught his attention.

I would take this threat very seriously.

^--- This. Every word of it.

Two words went through my head reading the response. "Crystal Meth".

Likely not, really, but having more-or-less lost an old friend to meth I can't help but compare the similarities (... the "identicalities" actually):

- the desperation and paranoia

- a solid (but wildly misplaced) basis in reality

- the overwhelming externalization of blame

- the need to lash out and draw someone else in

- the completely nonsensical evidence

Bottom line is regardless of the reason, "Al" is extremely unstable. I agree that the lesson here is to not engage these types.

They are all also behavioral attributes of Jehovah's Witnesses and antisocial/Narcissistic personality disorders.

> - a solid (but wildly misplaced) basis in reality

can you explain this more ? I recognize some traits of these in me and siblings but we're not on meth at all.. so I find the psychological flaws interesting.

sorry about your friend too

You bet, and thanks for your condolences. In short, almost certainly this doesn't apply to you.

The pattern is that in these scenarios, usually the people are quite intelligent and often accomplished. This gives them a repository of valid phrases and concepts to draw upon to breath legitimacy into their boogeymen. The evidence they present, however, is completely benign. That person, however, has quite the story they think is proven. It's literally as if they're showing you a basic electronic device w/ the cover removed and that proves all sorts of maliciousness.

Attempting to argue back is completely ineffective and even if you "win" one point, they'll quickly shift to another and nothing sticks, especially not the next time you talk to them.

I wouldn't even remotely compare this to more commonly contested topics like differing religious/political/social views, even at the extreme. This involves a visceral fear that >you< are actively being attacked, not some nefarious, shadow with a grand plan.

In my experience... a characteristic of this type of condition is a tendency for the brain to make connections too eagerly, and to jump to conclusions. His computer did something weird, therefore it must have been hacked. He heard about the Solarwinds breach in the news, therefore it must be related. He opened some files and saw Daniel's name, therefore he must be responsible. And so on.

It really is what my father does. We're very analytical in his side of the family. We're also prone to narrow view when we have 'attacks' we make huge amounts of logical connections that explains (or try to) what we suppose is happening and it's near impossible to deal with us until the storm is over. A kind of paranoid burst. Maybe not to the extent of your friend but from your words it's really similar.

Have you ever spoken to a professional? Even if you don't feel like anything is wrong, it can be a good to know yourself better. And if anything, potentially face an aspect of yourself that may otherwise surprise you later in life.

I have a very clear idea of what spectrum we're talking about here, but maybe it's better left unspecified to not influence too much (:

>We are dealing with a person with mental illness, because nothing is coherent. It's all made up

Seem like the average person to me :)

Have you ever sat down and had a long, and deep conversation with someone suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia after they've experienced a psychotic break?

I assure you, you will quickly understand the difference.

Especially if that someone is your previously un-diagnosed friend and business partner.

Bingo! It reads very similar to the GitHub repo of an insane person that was posted here about a year ago. The one where I think he/she talks of special agents and has a bunch of random files with random stuff in them.

I am pretty sure they are not even a script kiddie... they are just a fairly immature troll.

Not sure what caused the original email, but the reply is just a copy/paste of various unrelated things and security incidents that the person Googled without even understanding enough about them to form a comprehensible narrative.

Which tells me they are simply trying to get a rise out of someone.

The way the grammar is constructed I would not be surprised if this came from a pre-teen.

Not sure about the pre-teen part: it sounds more like someone who's not english native; and he mentions losing "his country".

I doubt this is real. The dude is attaching screenshots from his iPhone...

The sentence: 'You built a formula 1 race car and tossed the keys to kids'

Suggests he doesn't even comprehend that curl amounts to 'instructions to copy data'

And Formula 1 cars don’t have keys...

The guy is unhinged but he was clearly making an analogy.

The analogy to Formula 1 isn't apt either. It can be the wheel, the engine or the steer. But it's no way a whole "car".

A better analogy is a screwdriver. He made a screwdriver. Screwdrivers have millions of legitimate and essential uses. How would you build anything without one? But a criminal could also use the screwdriver to open stuff he's not supposed to. Blaming the screwdriver manufacturer for that is pointless.

There’s an automobile analogy for everything in computing (but woe to those who use the wrong one).

I've been in the government contracting space for about six months but those emails look to me to be about the level of competency I'm seeing with many of my colleagues. Spaghetti code with no unit tests and nobody knows how to use a debugger let alone a profiler. Getting irrationally mad at open source devs for making changes as if they were supposed keep the Jira tickets they were working on in mind specifically. Lack of ownership. Finger pointing. This looks quite real to me.

If it's not a troll I don't know what is, if it's for real that person has to have some serious mental health problems.

Trolls prefer to use public fora in order to upset the greatest number of people possible. They don't target individuals through private correspondence.

If this guy really lost a multi-million dollar defense project maybe the US Government should donate some money to Curl as a thank you.

I agree; this seems like someone with so little technical ability, that I wouldn't be surprised if he did manage to talk someone into a buying a multi million dollar defense project he could not deliver...

> I lost my family, my country my friends, my home and 6 years of work trying to build a better place for posterity.

I get loosing your family / home / friends, but a country? Where did that go?

This sounds like the result of unscrupulous "boot camps" that are common in countries like India - people are told if they sign up and pay $life_savings they can become a programmer and be hired by "The US Government" or other companies for enormous amounts of money.

A mundane class is offered with impractical advice and they're left with no money, little skills, and spamming the internet trying to get "their contract" - and if it doesn't materialize and they go back to the boot camp to complain the scammers blame it on "curl" - see the haxx.se domain? Clearly a hax0r ruined your chance at a better life.

My bet is on GPT-2 (GPT-3 would probably generate better text). This whole reply just isn't coherent (first it's a defence contract, then it's learning software for kids?). So either AI generated or someone with some mental illness.

Yep, I was going to suggest this too. It feels copy/pasted from Talk to Transformer.

Yeah, I have a seriously hard time believing someone responsible for a multibillion dollar defence project writes that shit.

Sadly, I see it as in the realm of possibility.

Gov contracting is an ecosystem on its own and those that figure out the bureaucratic hoops can survive a long time without needed much technical knowledge. Some of those individuals lose touch with what is going on outside of the defense industrial base.

I have a hard time believing that they only spent $15k on a prototype for a multimillion dollar defense project.

It might be he did, or was planning to do, a bid on a government project that wouldn't have stood a chance in hell, but he already imagined he was going to win that bid. And then stuff happened and he felt cheated out of his chance.

I once had a guy who ran an enterprise supplying software to the defence sector try to swing a punch at me in a meeting, so I can believe it.

Those emails are textbook schizophrenia.

The fact that this email could plausibly be someone with schizophrenia or an actual defense contractor speaks volumes about the latter’s reputation.

It could be both for that matter. Previously perfectly (at least seemingly) stable people can have unexpected breakdowns later in life.

I thought that the ads are from Daniel's email client. Not that it detracts from your point.

Daniel wrote the email contains screenshots that look like they came from a phone, and the image shows one of them.

So the ad is from this Al guy.

Yeah, I realised I was talking BS. Unfortunately HN doesn't allow me to edit/delete the comment anymore.

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