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“Subject: Urgent Warning”

daniel.haxx.se

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Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#91

Post by fab13n »

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #51
JoshTriplett wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway. When you have a conversation with an idiot, nobody watching can tell which one of you is the idiot. A friend of mine who works as a college professor has a fun approach to deal with the kinds of random cranks who contact him out of the blue seeking someone to validate their wild Time-Cube-style theories and "research": he responds to each one by providing an introduction to the previous one. Apparently, he…

This idea terrifies me even more than it amuses me. The notion of the long-term influence that could be gained by a network of cooperating Time-Cube-style theorists is enough to give me nightmares.

Yet helping crackpots (along with every other motivated people) find each other is unavoidably part of what the Internet does. I believe the good coming out of it outweighs the bad, but you're definitely not the only one being afraid.

It seems that many of those scared are those who've learned in a time of knowledge scarcity (it was difficult to find any information at all on any subject. It took at least a trip to a library and some ability to search the index). Today the challenge is to critically navigate in an overdose of information, a lot of it complete rubbish. The hard part is about filtering out, not finding material.

Now what scares me is that, at least in my country, many teachers haven't realised that the times of knowledge scarcity are gone. They tell student that using Wikipedia is cheating, instead of teaching them how to understand and navigate its (wonderful) citation system, to properly assess information quality.

(note: I suspect your comment to be tongue-in-cheek, but I felt like interpreting it 1st degree anyway)

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#92

Post by mhurron »

mwcampbell wrote: post #73
elthran wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, from http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/about/ >I’m Daniel Stenberg, a network hacker working for Mozilla. Sigh. Why does everyone have to be a hacking rockstar ninja? What's wrong with not using a word that has negative connotations to the rest of the world, and just calling yourself a developer/engineer?

Why all the downvotes for this comment? I think the point is reasonable. It's fine for us to use the word "hacker" in the non-criminal sense among ourselves (for example, the title of this site), but not where the general public is likely to see it and misunderstand it.

> but not where the general public is likely to see it and misunderstand it.

So nowhere. It's on the public internet which is where 'the general public' is likely to see it so suggesting that you don't use some phrase where 'the public' can't see it in practically means you can't use it anywhere.

I know the last thing I want to do is self censor myself everywhere because someone somewhere might get offended.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#93

Post by elorant »

cookiecaper wrote: post #43
madaxe_again wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bellow at a stranger because you don't understand something, you're an idiot, sorry. I'd like to hope an "average" person would not gloss over gaps in their knowledge and jump to a hostile conclusion. In your scenario, say you're the phone company - would you think it reasonable if the customer who called in your example blames you for their having made a call and placed an order, because the phone line must h…

>If you bellow at a stranger because you don't understand something, you're an idiot, sorry. To be fair, the email included in the OP is not really bellowing. She's politely explaining that she found his contact information inside the documentation distributed with the app, and providing screenshots as proof. I think a simple explanation that the name is included only due to technicalities of copyright law and that t…

Please keep in mind that Facebook owns Instagram and these are big companies that you likely don’t want to have a trail of evidence that you are a part of an Instagram and Spotify hacking ring.

This sounds like bellowing. It's borderline blackmail. Help me with my request or else I make sure Facebook knows what a scumbag you are.

The funny thing about this whole story is that she's not contacting him because she thinks he works at Instagram, which would be an understandable misconception, but instead she thinks he's with the hacking team. You have to be completely imbecile to think of villains answering with their real names.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#94

Post by theandrewbailey »

madaxe_again wrote: post #24

Ah, this sort of thing is as old as the moon. We run an eCommerce platform, have a variety of clients using it, they have a number of customers. At least once a week we get an accusation either from a client or an end-user of some outlandish nefarious behaviour, usually due to some complete lack of understanding of the nature of technology. Way back when, we responded, tried to help, tried to explain, but it tends to…

> Anyway. When you have a conversation with an idiot, nobody watching can tell which one of you is the idiot.

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#95

Post by psykovsky »

woah wrote: post #78
pilif wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or, even easier to understand analogy: Daniel is the person on the photograph, Spotify/Instagram are the photographers and the hacker is the person who just stole the picture.

Or- the user is the photographer, Instagram is making use of the photos, and Daniel hacked her phone

I fear she's labeling herself as a photographer because she uses Instagram to post photos taken with her iphone...

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#96

Post by JoeAltmaier »

psykovsky wrote: post #95
woah wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or- the user is the photographer, Instagram is making use of the photos, and Daniel hacked her phone

I fear she's labeling herself as a photographer because she uses Instagram to post photos taken with her iphone...

And why the snark about what tools the photographer is using? Do they have to fool around in a darkroom with chemicals to be a 'real photographer'? Note that their phone camera is better equipment than a generation of 'real' digital photographers had to make do with.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#97

Post by mootothemax »

I once received a request to hack a load of different companies' client databases due to one of my posts in the HN "Seeking freelancer" job threads, pretty much well solely because "Hacker" is in the site's title.

Bless him, the guy mostly kept on signing off his emails as "John," having forgotten to change his name in the "From" field, except for the time he forgot and signed his "real" name again.

(I say "emails" - it was a bizarre few exchanges, starting with "I have a job for you," and myself replying to his opaque emails to find out quite what on earth the guy was on about)

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#99

Post by disillusioned »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #62
madaxe_again wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bellow at a stranger because you don't understand something, you're an idiot, sorry. I'd like to hope an "average" person would not gloss over gaps in their knowledge and jump to a hostile conclusion. In your scenario, say you're the phone company - would you think it reasonable if the customer who called in your example blames you for their having made a call and placed an order, because the phone line must h…

> If you bellow at a stranger because you don't understand something, you're an idiot, sorry. But the thing is, does the bellower know they don't understand something? Few people are mature enough (especially when angry) to admit they really don't understand something (and this is probably prevalent in software development circles / communities, too)

A mark of intelligence is the ability to be objective about what you do and don't know. If I don't understand something, I don't jump down someone's throat based on the limited information I have and try to extrapolate from there. I try to learn more about the issue, listen to experts, evaluate the merits of their argument to the best of my ability, and form an opinion.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#100

Post by ChrisClark »

mootothemax wrote: post #97

I once received a request to hack a load of different companies' client databases due to one of my posts in the HN "Seeking freelancer" job threads, pretty much well solely because "Hacker" is in the site's title. Bless him, the guy mostly kept on signing off his emails as "John," having forgotten to change his name in the "From" field, except for the time he forgot and signed his "real" name again. (I say "emails" -…

That's actually kind of cute. He was trying to act all secretive, a 'job' for you. :)
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