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He Always Had a Dark Side

mastermind.atavist.com

31–40 of 380 posts

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#31
post #20

>He was, in other words, a troll: the kind of person you might find on Reddit I think it's funny that reddit is the go-to example of an internet shithole, instead of something like 4chan.

4chan is a shithole without a visible record... reddit on the other hand not only has a record it has meritocratic system aka karma that promotes harassment and internet trolling "just for the lulz and karma"

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#32
post #20

>He was, in other words, a troll: the kind of person you might find on Reddit I think it's funny that reddit is the go-to example of an internet shithole, instead of something like 4chan.

It's probably just that more people have heard of reddit and can easier relate to rather than 4chan. Although it's probably unfair - I am using reddit for a few years and they have tons of amazing communities and le reddit army (swatters, Boston bombers, etc) are amazingly easy to miss unless you're looking for them.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#33
post #6

>>"He was particularly protective of Le Roux’s birth mother, making me promise not to reveal her name. “Sad and interesting story,” he said. “His real mom’s mom is married to a U.S. Senator.” When I asked him who the Senator was, he said, “That I can’t say, mate. That’ll get me shot.”" This is probably a bigger story.

US Senators generally are not powerful enough to have people shot.

I'm not sure I'd take that assertion at face value. It seemed to read more on par with something like "I took my moms car for a ride, if she finds out, she'll kill me" kind of hyperbola. Could be wrong, since there are arms dealers involved, but still, I don't think they rub people out like that and risk exposure.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#34
"Shortly after TrueCrypt version 1.0 was released in February 2004, the TrueCrypt Team reported receiving emails from Wilfried Hafner, manager of SecurStar, claiming that Paul Le Roux had stolen the source code of E4M from SecurStar as an employee. According to the TrueCrypt Team, the emails stated that Le Roux illegally distributed E4M, and authored an illegal license permitting anyone to base derivative work on E4M and distribute it freely, which Hefner alleges Le Roux did not have any right to do, claiming that all versions of E4M always belonged only to SecurStar. For a time, this led the TrueCrypt Team to stop developing and distributing TrueCrypt" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4M

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#35
post #13

> Lulu told me that when Le Roux was 15 or 16, in the late 1980s, the local police raided the family home and arrested Paul for selling pornography online. This seems a bit odd to me, having lived in South Africa at that time. There's almost no way a guy at home would have had that kind of access in Apartheid South Africa to the internet back then. There was access, but it was through big companies or academia and on…

To run a BBS you need nothing more than a C64, a 300 bps modem and a phone line. Also, I'm not sure if you know anything about phone phreaking but in the 80s it was pretty much the preferred method of connecting to BBSs internationally.

Yes but from a teenager in Krugersdorp? And South Africa did not have such easy access to the international telephone market. The country was in the middle of economic sanctions at the time - international calls had to be placed through a switchboard with the government run telecom monopoly provider - Telkom. They also cost a literal arm and a leg for a couple minutes and were heavily monitored by the Apartheid regime. An actual police state.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#37
post #20

>He was, in other words, a troll: the kind of person you might find on Reddit I think it's funny that reddit is the go-to example of an internet shithole, instead of something like 4chan.

I think it's funny that both of those sites seems to get represented by a more vocal and publicly visible subset of their users, and in 4chan's case by a slightly unfair-seeming set of associations between anyone using the term "Anonymous" (despite the fact that Anonymous is simply a name that one can take up without it implying any real link to a group), the one board out of many that is apparently implicated in anything "Anonymous" does, and the site as a whole.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#39
post #6

>>"He was particularly protective of Le Roux’s birth mother, making me promise not to reveal her name. “Sad and interesting story,” he said. “His real mom’s mom is married to a U.S. Senator.” When I asked him who the Senator was, he said, “That I can’t say, mate. That’ll get me shot.”" This is probably a bigger story.

US Senators generally are not powerful enough to have people shot.

Depends on which Sub Committee they are on, and what position they hold on it....

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#40
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To run a BBS you need nothing more than a C64, a 300 bps modem and a phone line. Also, I'm not sure if you know anything about phone phreaking but in the 80s it was pretty much the preferred method of connecting to BBSs internationally.

Yes but from a teenager in Krugersdorp? And South Africa did not have such easy access to the international telephone market. The country was in the middle of economic sanctions at the time - international calls had to be placed through a switchboard with the government run telecom monopoly provider - Telkom. They also cost a literal arm and a leg for a couple minutes and were heavily monitored by the Apartheid regim…

As a teenager in the US, it was one of my main activities, so I can believe the age. I'm not sure about how it would go in SA.
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