Hacker News Reader

Comment by loydb | Hacker News Reader

As the guy they're talking about, I did keep an offsite backup. The GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript existed in three places -- my computer at home, my computer at work, and the Illuminati BBS.

They took all three. They also got my wife's in-progress Master's Thesis, and she had to restart from scratch because they refused to return even a copy.

I'm curious where the quote attributed to me was sourced from, as I don't remember saying that. However, since I regularly come across things in old backups that I had totally forgotten, both code and written text, it may be completely legit.

I'm kind of surprised the author didn't bother to contact me at all (I'm hardly difficult to find). We weren't awakened at gunpoint, for instance. That was Goggans. We were awakened by pounding on our apartment door at 6 AM.

View on HN

Hi, I wrote the article. The long quote from you is sourced from a (pre-raid) article you wrote for Steve Jackson's house organ of the time "Roleplayer" #15; be happy to send you a scan if you're don't have one.

As for being woken up at gunpoint, that's sourced from a number of contemporary accounts, including a Mar 5 1990 comp.dcom.telecom post (reposted in Phrack #31) reading "The Mentor was awakened at 6:30am on Thursday (3/1/90) with the gun of a Secret Service agent pointed at his head."

I do apologize if it seems standoffish not to have dropped you a line while I was working on it - it's kind of my shtick that I work exclusively from documentary evidence of the era I'm writing about rather than from interviews today. No method is perfect, but the results tend to be pretty decent.

Like I said, it doesn't surprise me that I said that, I just didn't remember it.

But a random Usenet post from someone who undoubtedly wasn't there isn't a source, it is hearsay....

And how hard would it have been to look at the cover of Cyberpunk and spell my name right?

I hadn't noticed that your name is misspelled in the published version - sorry about that, I'll see if that can get fixed. It must have been spellchecked somewhere late in the editorial process.

And as for the gun in your face, obviously you know best what happened to you, I was just explaining why the article says what it says. I will not repeat the hearsay.

They had guns when they came in the door, but Goggans had said something to the effect of 'you'll never take me alive' on a BBS post, so they were a little more proactive in his case... :)

They did manage to correct your name in the story, fyi.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com