Hacker News Reader

Comment by dobbsbob | Hacker News Reader

Years of linux kernel, theo de raadt/bsd, and grsec mailing list total rage and various IRC hacker/dev channel slamming of idiocy has hardened my skin and actually makes me thankful they are clear, concise and direct with their criticism instead of phony hand holding and passive aggressiveness. It's a rite of passage to get your ass handed to you by other devs. Some people just don't get it, you have to pummel them with a blast of anger on the mailing list or they'll continue to waste everybody's time with their idiocy.

It's not the end of the world if somebody calls your insecure program a pile of shit and you a nerf herding waste of skin for inflicting said shit upon the world. That's like standard behaviour since the days of Stallman at MIT labs

View on HN

This. Every time someone gets flamed, you get the same crowd of people going "what an asshole". Except, oh wait, the person got flamed for breaking userspace and not fessing up to it, or providing a false sense of security to people whose lives depend upon it. And in each case, these weren't newbies - they had been warned before and should have known better. It's not just ignorance, it's willful, practically malicious ignorance.

Wake up. This isn't some social media photo-sharing app. This is the literal definition of mission critical software. Being an asshole is the cost to pay to either a) convince incompetent people to stop wasting everyone else's time or b) convince them to become competent.

You know why I don't write and release crypto software? Because I know I'm not qualified to.

This is a really gross attitude, and it's even grosser that you dress it up like some macho rite-of-passage. Call it what it is: A bunch of bitter nerds taking their pent-up anger out on random newbies. It's the fraternity hazing of the tech world, it's bullshit, and it needs to stop. It doesn't need other bitter nerds treating it like it's normal.

Instead of expecting newbies to know they're going to be met with a storm of putrid shit should they speak a syllable out of line, how about we expect our moderators and leaders have some degree of social skill?

I think there's something wrong with you if you get all uppity and bent out of shape over a senior developer calling you out. I actually laugh when Theo De Raadt calls my device driver a flaming bag of of shit, and says my head must be so far up my ass I'm unable to understand the interfaces I'm coding to.

I rewrite it then submit it to somebody else to review before submission, then get a message saying thanks for doing it the proper way, thanks for using the proper channels, and hey you seem OK do you want to come to the invite only hackathon in Germany this year? If I cried about it instead, I'd still be a shitty programmer, and I wouldn't be drinking gigantic beers in Hamburg learning invaluable methods from Henning Brauer how to properly design a program from the ground up with security in mind so you don't have to dispose of everything half way through a major project, wasting everybody else's time because you didn't carefully design. If you think mailing list comments are bad, wait until a room full of developers has to delete six days worth of coding because you screwed up the design with a simple mistake. Wait until your boss finds out you wasted company resources and money for months and had to scrap a project. You will get worse than hurt feelings, you will be fired.

Almost all security/crypto projects are open source. There's no money involved, therefore no corporate sensitivity training or social skills needed. What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests.

There's something wrong with someone who doesn't want to get treated like shit? You're not helping your case.

> What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests.

Oh, get over yourself. We all know the vast majority of online cryptographic transmissions are for child pornography and drug purchases. Don't act like Syrian rebels actually use these technologies when most of them don't even have access to a computer, let alone the knowledge of how to use one.

This is seriously the problem. You sit there and think modern cryptography is something other than a rich white guy's game, as though it's nothing but a Righteous Endeavor, so you get to treat other people like shit. The fact that the paragraph before that one is all about how you're getting drunk at some invite-only German hackathon is proof enough.

Ooooo, yea, you lost me when you attacked cryptography instead of sticking to the "spade is a spade" argument against being a dick online.

I understand your need to argue against a certain opinion, but I find it ironic that in a post where you use the term 'a rich white guy's game' you state that most people in Syria don't have access to a computer yet alone the knowledge how to use one. Yet a quick search shows Syria as 55th in the world with regards to Internet users - 5.4 million Internet users, or just over 24% of the population. Couple this with the fact that the government took Syria off of the global Internet, I think that maybe there is a solid use case for Syrians using strong crypto.

In context, Syria has the third lowest internet penetration in the entire Middle East at 22.5%.[0] Considering there are only ~195 countries in the world, being #55 is pretty low. 5.4m is nothing to forget about, of course, but my original point was that most don't have access. The United States, on the other hand, has 78.1% penetration.[1]

Obviously I'm not arguing that Syrians who have access to computers shouldn't get to use crypto, or that there has never been a Syrian who used crypto to aid in protest. But let's not act like crypto's main usage is as righteous as helping a rebellion against an oppressive regime.

[0]: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm

[1]: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm

> But let's not act like crypto's main usage is as righteous as helping a rebellion against an oppressive regime.

You realise that cryptocat isn't marketing itself as a chat client for paedophiles and drug users, but for activists in oppressive regimes, right?

Here's one example from their blog:

> In working with young and middle-aged professionals in the Middle East region, we have discovered that desktop OTR clients suffer from serious usability issues which are sometimes further exacerbated due to language differences and lack of cultural integration (the technology was frequently described as “foreign”). In one case, an activist who was fully trained to use Pidgin-OTR neglected to do so citing usability difficulties, and as a direct consequence encountered a life-threatening situation at the hands of a national military in the Middle East and North Africa region.

That's why people keep talking about the risk from foreign governments - because the cryptocat hype keeps mentioning governments.

dobbsbob's post was not concentrating on Cryptocat. It was talking about all crypto projects. This is the entire block:

> Almost all security/crypto projects are open source. There's no money involved, therefore no corporate sensitivity training or social skills needed. What's needed is secure code to stop governments from rounding up Syrian and Bahraini dissidents and drilling holes into their knees during interrogation because they were duped into trusting cryptocat while planning their democracy protests.

If Syrian rebels aren't using computers, why would pro-government forces bother to send them malware? See: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/iinternet-back-in-syri...

Your unsupported claim that the "majority of cryptographic transmissions are for child pornography and drug purchases" is insanely wrong.

Given the default use of HTTPS by Google, Hotmail (Live.com), Twitter and most recently Facebook, it is almost certain that the legitimate traffic to/from those sites vastly outnumbers, by several orders of magnitude, whatever encrypted data is sent by folks exchanging child pornography images or buying drugs via silk road.

You don't know what you're talking about.

You are exactly the kind of self absorbed, reckless person crypto projects want to weed out, so it's great you take criticism personally and run off crying. No amount of hand holding or spoon feeding will make you understand it's importance so the tried and true method of removing clueless, poisonous (and in your case dangerous due to your prejudice) time wasters via deflating their ego has been vindicated and you are the proof why it still works. The farther a fragile basketcase like you is kept away from critical protocols the better off humanity is.

Please, comments like this are not welcome on HN. Your comment is needlessly derisive and personal.

From the guidelines:

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

This was uncivil. I doubt you would say that to his face. Comments like this are likely to get flagged, and if it happens enough, your account will get banned. It doesn't matter how good of a programmer you are, or how impolite RMS and Theo are.

You are exactly the kind of programmer I hope I never become. But I would like to thank you for this content! I'm saving this series of comments from you - when I become a CS professor at some small community college, I want to warn my students what they can become if they aren't careful.

I guess you failed to read the part where I was responding to somebody who basically said Syrians are too inferior to use computers, and that cryptography was only used by criminals.

You are exactly the kind of CS professor I'm glad I never had. You failed to read everything and care more about politics than quality of code and safety of users (k now im just trolling, sorry but read the actual replies)

I've taken some time away from this discussion, had something to eat, cooled down a bit, and I'd like to say that I'm sorry if I offended you. I didn't realize how abrasive I was being.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5991882 is the comment I was responding to. Before you freak out realize HN does not show linear comments so the orig was downvoted and it looks like I'm blasting somebody harmless

No, I think people should be treated roughly in the same way they'd expect to be treated in meatspace. I know I don't always configure a server correctly the first time, but if my lead called me a fucking dipshit and a waste of time, I'd go find another job real damned quick.

There's a certain level of banter and sarcasm allowed between friends and known colleagues, but strangers don't have that luxury, or shouldn't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com