Comment by johnnyg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyg | Hacker News Reader

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I think it is funny that the YC crowd points to "naughty" when it benefits them and says things like "Am I supposed to feel sorry for someone that got caught exploiting online games?" when it doesn't.

When someone will take apart a game for fun, for better or for worse and often both, it is intrinsic. We praise capncrunch and damn this guy?

I'm sorry you lost your parents Scott. Congratulations on your child and marriage. YC is a mixed bag but I feel home here too.

There are a lot of ways to hack the world. I'm not sure if you've picked inconsistent/risky ones because of personality type/thrill or because it is where you landed. If its where you landed, move toward the center.

Sounds like you've got the basic small business skills to sell many things and you don't require permission or motivation to do so.

Consider hacking on your life instead of the games. What do you know that's inefficient where you are and could be interesting?

I hear heavy equipment auctions are big and profitable in rural areas and I know from experience it is a space software hasn't touched.

Pick a product or set of products (wave energy harvesting equipment?) and niche it via PPC. See what the market is like for them on eBay.

Go with the black hat and get picked up by a security consulting firm. I've rarely seen them be degree choosy with people who have the chops.

Don't make the mistake of thinking the only interesting things are on the fringes.

Lastly, ignore the rest of the noise of this thread. Keep your head up. Stay interested. Stay playful.

Thanks for this comment. It's filled with warmth and insight. "We praise capncrunch and damn this guy" is a great point.

I don't think the responses here are a single "YC crowd" being hypocritical. The thread is more interesting than that. It's at least two different groups having polarized responses to the article.

One group is rule-oriented and binary, quickly seizes on any violation of the (personal or social) code they believe in, and extends that into a personal judgment of the violator. Such people often express their judgments harshly. It's worth remembering that the same harshness inevitably applies to themselves; one doesn't get to handle that acid with gloves.

The other group, of course, identifies with the author's pluck and self-motivation and doesn't hold his dodgy beginnings against him. They don't necessarily support the cheating but admire the ingenuity more, and are generally more indulgent. They probably read the story as what PG called being "relentlessly resourceful".

This dichotomy plays out on HN all the time, though rarely so vividly. Both groups are well-represented both on HN and among programmers in general.

I think there's a great point inside your comment, but that the way you have expressed it is unkindly biased against those on what I surmise to be the opposite of your side of the debate.

When describing the first group, you use lots of seemingly negative descriptions: "rule-oriented and binary", "quickly seizes on any violation", "extends that into a personal judgment", "express their judgments harshly", and "that acid".

When describing the other group you use lots of positive language: "pluck and self-motivation", "admire the ingenuity", "generally more indulgent", and "relentlessly resourceful". Plus there is an appeal to PG's authority on this site.

There are positive and negative aspects of both sides here, and I think you're being pretty harsh toward one of the factions.

You're right: I'm biased on this one [1], it affects the words I use, and (most interestingly to me, because I didn't notice it until later), my comment contained some of the quality it was criticizing. If you or anyone wants to write a fairer description, I'd read it with interest. On sunny days I imagine a community in which people would figure these things out together and communication would level up as a result.

1. Originally I wrote that I was a "card-carrying member of the second group", but edited that out after imagining someone taking the joke literally.

I understand his stance, but I don't think the point really stand up.

Articles about SPAM can be engaging. But, that hardly means people support the activity. IMO, duping in online games is the same basic thing as it's a classic free rider problem. People are not going to buy duped items in a single player game it's only the 'non' duping players that make item duping a profitable activity and their game play is harmed by it.

Performance enhancing drugs fall into the same category. The methods/chemistry might be interesting, but clearly 'clean' athletes (and arguably the fans) are harmed by the activity.

PS: Or can you actually see a benefit from doping that I am missing?

To my mind the issue isn't whether the game cheating business was good, but whether its badness deserves to overwhelm everything else about the story.

I think the problem isn't entirely the badness, but that the author seems so oblivious to it despite its pervasiveness in the piece.

If the guy had said early on, "Ok, now I realize that part of my problem is that my business was essentially parasitical, and I'm trying to learn from that" I would have been able to read the rest of the article with more equanimity.

I really do admire his pluck, and for his age he is learning a lot of hard lessons. But reading this reminded me of watching a horror movie where some goof obliviously walks along with the serial killer right behind them. You just want to shout, "TURN AROUND! LOOK BEHIND YOU!" So I'm not shocked that commenters have to get that off their chests before they can process the rest of it.

It also reminds me of the conversations I had in the mid-1990s with spammers, because back then you could actually track 'em down and get 'em on the phone. They had this same inability to see that they were their own worst enemy. They saw problems on all sides and thought the world was against them. But really, the common factor in the problems was them.

It is for all of us, of course. But it can be hard to watch others struggle with that.

...quickly seizes on any violation of the (personal or social) code they believe in...

I'm in this camp but not for this reason. I disagree with what he did because it made games I paid for no longer fun.

The real world is chock full of secret exploits that get relentlessly ground that then allow people with more money to spend to get ahead of me. I was hoping my games didn't have to be like that too.

Re "They don't support the cheating": this person struggles with debt and death. Great if they made desperately needed money from some gaming corporation's bugs. By playing a metagame which is probably more fun than the intended game.

Unless there's some awful crime I missed, I commend the author's hacking (if they want such a commendation).

Ok, I'll add "necessarily" to accommodate you.

> Such people often express their judgments harshly. It's worth remembering that the same harshness inevitably applies to themselves; one doesn't get to handle that acid with gloves.

That's just world theory. The real nature of the thing is, that if they maintain that kind of cognitive dissonance, they never reap the benefits of conquering their own biases. But this sort of "judges judging judges", I always seem to get lost in it as well.

> This dichotomy plays out on HN all the time, though rarely so vividly. Both groups are well-represented both on HN and among programmers in general.

It does, but I think calling it a dichotomy is a misrepresentation. In complex systems, black and white are arbitrary, it just depends on what content you highlight and compose inferences from, and what you discard.

> The thread is more interesting than that.

I agree.

This seems like an oddly reductive take, to me. It's possible to appreciate the pluck and ingenuity while being utterly dismayed by the lack of judgement and self-reflection. And this dismay need not come purely from some misplaced urge for opprobrium.

His broken moral compass and naive sense of entitled victimhood are preventing him from leveraging his talents to find the kind of work that he wants. You can easily be misguidedly "relentlessly resourceful". Just like you can be both fascinated and saddened to see it happen.

I agree with your first paragraph. It's not only possible to see multiple sides to this, it's sane. But you may have missed my point, which is that comments in the thread tended to take one side or the other.

Your second paragraph, I think, goes way too far. I don't believe you have nearly enough information to make that judgment. In fact, you can't have it, because it mostly depends on what the author learns (or doesn't learn) from his mistakes, which means it depends on the future.

On rescanning the thread, you probably right about the first bit.

And we are definitely reacting to each others' notions of how bothered one ought to be by his behaviour.

'Broken moral compass' may be a little harsh but I think you are perhaps swayed too far by the display of resourcefulness and the 'virtualness' and triviality of the setting. I'd see it differently if he were a 14 year old kid, figuring out how the world works. But he's an adult (with a spouse and a mortgage) who more or less tried to extort the developers of the mmorpg into giving him a job. This seems like sufficient information to conclude that he has rather poor ethical judgement or at least, a great deal of ethical obliviousness.

It reminds me a bit of a part of 'Reflections on Trusting Trust' that is rarely cited or recalled - open it up when you have a chance and re-read the last three paragraphs of the last section 'Moral'.

> Thanks for this comment. It's filled with warmth and insight. "We praise capncrunch and damn this guy" is a great point

...

> One group is rule-oriented and binary, quickly seizes on any violation of the (personal or social) code they believe in, and extends that into a personal judgment of the violator. Such people often express their judgments harshly. It's worth remembering that the same harshness inevitably applies to themselves; one doesn't get to handle that acid with gloves.

Captain Crunch, from what I've read, hacked the phone system to make free long distance calls, and used that ability to play around doing things like routing call loops around the world. He probably caused some monetary harm to the phone company, but did not interfere with the use of the system by ordinary users.

Exploiting dupe bugs in MMORPGs and trading game items for non-game currency does interfere with the ordinary players of the games. Most people want games they play to be fair. In an MMORPG, that means what my character achieves in the game world should be determined as much as possible by what I do in the game world. There should be as little spill-over from the real world to the game world.

The real world cannot be completely kept out, of course. Someone with more disposable income can buy better hardware to run the game on, which can give better frame rates and let them turn on more visual effects. This can let them play their character more effectively, and so give them an in-game advantage. Someone who can afford to take time off can do time consuming things in-game that those of who have to go to work cannot.

Still, for the most part it used to be that getting the good stuff in-game came from earning it in-game. The exploiters and the traders of items for dollars changed that. If's frustrating when you are struggling to complete a quest for some rare item, or work you way to some rare monster that drops powerful loot, and you are beaten out by some lower level party that has a huge advantage because they were decked out with rare powerful armor and weapons no one of their level should have been able to obtain but they bought for real-world money from some dupe bug exploiter.

So yes, I can praise (well...I wouldn't go that far..make it "not be bothered by") Captain Crunch but damn running an MMORPG dupe exploiting business.

> The other group, of course, identifies with the author's pluck and self-motivation and doesn't hold his dodgy beginnings against him.

I don't hold his dodgy beginnings against him either. My problem with him is that it sounds like he gave up the dodgy business only because he was down to one exploit and was getting a bit burned out. It sounds like whether is next business is good or is dodgy will likely be determined by whether he happens to come across a good opportunity first or a dodgy opportunity first. There's no sign of repentance for the dodgy business.

> Go with the black hat and get picked up by a security consulting firm.

Go with the black hat and end up in jail. Don't do this, guy. It's not worth it. Please do good. :-/

I did not say that clearly.

I mean if you like breaking things for fun, work for a digital security company and get paid to do it. Be the guy who is paid to do penetration tests and the like.

That's "Black Hat" work turned to the good.

Ah, no worries.

To be fair, he's more or less already a "black hat" insofar that he's profited off of the arguably illegal use of computer systems.

I wouldn't be so hasty to dismiss HN's attitude towards his previous company -- I think if he tries to get a job and cites his "dupe" work, he's going to be surprised how few folks will be willing to work with him.

I work for a security firm (FireEye, woo we're hiring!) and while I'm not specifically on the consulting side, I get the sense that it's a very straight-laced bunch of folks who take their jobs incredibly seriously.

You don't want to walk into an interview with a guy who works with the FBI on the regular and confess to constantly, repeatedly, and profitably committing a computer crime. It's just not going to work well for you, all moralization aside.

I think you mean "White Hat"

My Dad has been selling heavy equipment. There are plenty of online auction sites but an in person auction is incredibly effective. Also, industry magazines and local publications often advertise heavy equipment. Most rural folks I know don't have reliable internet and a good portion of the demographic doesn't use the internet. I really don't see a good market here.

Thank you very much for your kind and helpful response. I expected this post to get very little attention, but in the overwhelming response it's been amazing to read comments like yours.

Thankfully my mother is still alive, and is enjoying checking off what she still can from her bucket list. We're very grateful she's done well with the chemo so far.

Hacking my life is exactly what I've been up to recently. I'm learning, as fast as I can, everything I'll need to know to be the full stack developer for the project I'm working on. I'm so thankful for the free resources available to learn from.

>When someone will take apart a game for fun, for better or for worse and often both, it is intrinsic.

OP was taking apart a game for profit, not fun. Taking apart a game to because you have an intrinsic drive to understand how things work is one thing. Taking apart a game to exploit glitches to make real life money is completely different - that's why people get irritated at this and I don't think you understand that. In games with markets and limited drops, it's understandable that it pisses people off - introducing duped items lowers the value of every instance of that item in the market, which affects people who legitimately play the game. Hacking a single player game to make yourself a demigod in it is awesome because it doesn't affect other people.

I don't know who capncrunch is and I can't speak to what you perceive as some kind of HN bias, but I'm reading this thread and seeing many different responses posted by individual people. The most hostile comment I've read is yours.

Lastly, ignore the rest of the noise of this thread.

This is really obnoxious. You're essentially dismissing everyone else's opinion in this thread, whether you've read it and understood it or not. You have no idea about what OP is doing, who they are, or what they're capable of and or what their context is and you're saying "ignore all advice but mine." Incredibly arrogant and dismissive towards the rest of the community.

I understand how painful economy-ruining exploits can be as a player who has been through that multiple times when exploiters acted in carelessness or disregard. I didn't express it well enough in the article, but one of the most difficult parts of the business was finding the balance where I could please the maximum number of item-buying players without even putting a dent in the value of those items in the economy. It was just as important to me that the items retain their maximum value.

Due to everyone's obliviousness and doubt about the exploit, I think I was successful in maintaining that balance. I believe I was watching the economies at least as close as the game developer. It wasn't until after foreign gold-selling companies got their hands on a different dupe method years later and acted with complete disregard for the game's economy that anyone had even noticed.

I think you are too wrapped up in the morality of something that doesn't even come close to a real business. It seems a lot of people on here play these games so they find it easy to feed some anger into this topic. I can tell you that most people are probably indifferent to fairness in online games and won't be calling their senator any time soon.

One of many lessons I learned from this overwhelming surge of feedback in such a short period was about how quickly I gave into my instinct to defend myself. Instead of using excuses to justify my mistakes and moral shortcomings, I really should have put more effort into reflecting on the comments that were tough to read. I need to do that better in the future.

I am grateful for all of the perspectives everyone has expressed. It's been a great learning experience, and I've become aware of more of my faults that I can now consciously work to improve.

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