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Comment by znowi | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> are somehow more honorable than adults running businesses.

Gotta admit, I thought the same thing. Then I'm reminded of patent and trademark law...

What about it? Patent and trademark law are two things the typical valley "hacker" acutely oppose.

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.

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.

Sounds like somebody wasn't in the cool kids group.

What does this even mean?

You're cherry picking the worst examples and it just sounds bitter. That isn't how most people were, and there are plenty of bad actors in industry that have done (and continue to do) far worse.

No, I mean, which "cool kids" are you referring to? I'm asking seriously. What exactly are you talking about? I'll respond in detail. I've been involved in vulnerability research since high school. And I'm guessing I'm significantly older than you are: I was already working professionally when the Lopatic overflow hit.

I'm weakly willing to bet that whoever you think the "cool kids" were actually sucked.

Depends on what you mean by "sucked".

PLA, 303, cdc/l0pht, DoC ... there was precious little technical skill there (although there was some).

However, I'll take a CuervoCon over a pycon and a swamp ratte stage performance over a Steve Jobs presentation any day of the week.

You're taking it too literally, I wasn't referring to anyone. I explained the point in my previous post.

If your comment reflects sincerely held beliefs that accurately represent the scene as it was, I think it's safe to say you were not a part of it. Your derision of that culture is either out of dishonesty or ignorance.

You're willing to accuse me of being dishonest or ignorant, so I think you should be willing to be specific about what you're talking about. Which cool kids are you referring to?

I don't know how to make it more clear that I wasn't actually referring to any specific "cool kids" and that my statement was not intended to be taken literally.

Claim: for any given period of the hacker scene, saying it largely amounted to nothing more than things like carding and harassment is false, and this statement would only be made by someone who either: (a) was not exposed, or exposed only to a poor sample, and therefore doesn't understand the culture (ignorance); or (b) was exposed, but intentionally wishes to misrepresent the situation (dishonesty)

So I guess the possibilities are either that your statement was ignorant, dishonest, or my claim is wrong and the hacker scene (during whatever time period you intended) was in fact nothing more than dishonorable carders and trolls.

If nothing else, you must know that rming a compromised unix box was not the norm.

No, I know you to be wrong about that. It's also worth remembering that many of the smartest people in the '90s hack scene came from the virus scene.

What I don't understand is how someone who was around in the 90s could manage to mythologize a bunch of teenagers using semicolons and pipe filters to pop shells on boxes and dump mail spools.

Here's the part where you tell me that you once knew a hacker who never rm'd a box. Why am I meant to care about that? There was zero correlation in the 90s between skill and care for other people's data.

Your opening comment was, "sounds like someone wasn't in the cool kids group". Now you've moved the goalposts; turns out you weren't talking about the "cool kids" at all. But it doesn't matter whether we're talking specifics or the broader issue of whether hackers were more or less moral in the 1990s: you're comprehensively wrong. Consider resetting the "tptacek is always full of shit" bit that is obviously stuck in your brain.

tptacek is exactly right. Not to put words in his mouth, but "nothing more than" is your characterization of what he said as opposed to what he actually said. The history tptacek is describing goes back to the 1980s: use your favorite search engine to look for the name "Richard Sanzda" for a poignant example.

Do you understand why it's not valid to pick a single anecdote that aligns with your narrative and use it to draw conclusions about a large group of individuals?

I'm not mischaracterizing tptacek's comment. Nor am I suggesting that there were no bad actors.

tptacek said: "The "hackers" FD's moderator is talking about are the ones I'm talking about.", those being "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".

Obviously, this is not who the FD moderator was talking about, making tptacek's comment unfair.

You are dragging your feet so hard here, oh my god it's unbearable.

Wow, that was an uninformed comment.

> They aren't MIT students ordering sweet and sour bitter melon.

What's that a reference to?

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar...

I was looking for where that was posted and I think this is a bit more informative: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mShXzzKtpmEC&pg=PA60&lpg=...

They're undoubtably more honorable than the guys running one of finance’s leading law firms – Dewey & LeBoeuf.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/03/dealbook-misunderstands...

Not to mention the scum like Angelo Mozillo who gave us the financial crisis.

Sure. They're more honorable than mass murderers too.

We called them 'script kiddies'. I don't think they qualify as hackers any more than someone who spends time on 4chan and runs LOIC.

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.

> glib fakers, and corporate drones.

Truly PG's lack of self-awareness (or cynical dishonesty) is mind-boggling.

It reminds me of some lines along those found in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE_XGtUNx4

(Wear Sunscreen)

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.

> 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.

Err. Now I do like that book. But this might be overstating the case.

One day, Clojure is going to sweep the JVM world and all of the declarative folks are gonna read & weep and wonder how their lives were before USSR collapsed.

There are plenty of Lisp books that are just as good or better imo:

The Little Schemer

The Seasoned Schemer

SICP

Lisp In Small Pieces

Practical Common Lisp

C'mon dude, if you're going to flex, you gotta mention Let Over Lambda!

and, of course, Land of Lisp!

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.

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

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/barl...

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_disclosu...

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.

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

Good lord, that man is full of himself.

That's part [most?] of his appeal! b^)

>>> 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.

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

Rather especially LOD, LOD circa kicking out TM and the war with MOD was more the exception than the rule.

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.

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.

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

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