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He Always Had a Dark Side

mastermind.atavist.com

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Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#201

Post by ryandrake »

dang wrote: post #103
ryandrake wrote: post #50

Thank you. It's amazing how some authors use thousands of words to deliver such little information.

That's a seriously unfair thing to say. It's also an artifact of the title having been changed to cherry-pick a single detail, which breaks the HN rules. Though in this case I'm not sure it's worth it to change it back. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11382381 and marked it off-topic.

Alright, alright then, I retract my unfair comment but still thank parent for providing a summary.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#202

Post by aryehof »

myrbergs_army wrote: post #59

Original author of the story here... Just to add that 1. yes, the reporting on Le Roux's childhood is more tentative based on a family source (well backed up by docs and images sent to me). But the fact that the same Le Roux created E4M which formed the basis of TrueCrypt is something I think I've established definitively, company and site registration trails show it very firmly (and PLR himself admits it in court, b…

I really enjoyed reading all three parts. Many thanks!

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#203

Post by mratzloff »

mirimir wrote: post #66
myrbergs_army wrote: post #59

Original author of the story here... Just to add that 1. yes, the reporting on Le Roux's childhood is more tentative based on a family source (well backed up by docs and images sent to me). But the fact that the same Le Roux created E4M which formed the basis of TrueCrypt is something I think I've established definitively, company and site registration trails show it very firmly (and PLR himself admits it in court, b…

Aren't you nervous about doxxing someone like that so thoroughly?

Doxing is a targeted attack intended to harass and terrorize the victim as retribution for expressing dissenting opinions or beliefs. The ultimate goal is suppression of free speech.

Journalism is not doxing.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#204

Post by afreak »

adrusi wrote: post #191
afreak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gratipay offers bitcoin payments, which, if they implement it right, would eliminate the middleman [...] when the financee cashes out using bitcoin And tell me, how does one cut out the middleman when they convert their Bitcoin earnings to US dollars or whatever currency they prefer?

A few people will donate bitcoin. A few things can be bought directly with bitcoin. On average, you'd expect that the fraction of your income paid in bitcoin would be similar to the fraction of goods and services that you can pay for with bitcoin.

> A few people will donate bitcoin. A few things can be bought directly with bitcoin. On average, you'd expect that the fraction of your income paid in bitcoin would be similar to the fraction of goods and services that you can pay for with bitcoin.

The point of donating money to the author of the piece is to encourage them to continue writing this epic story. Giving them Bitcoin is akin to leaving a tip to your server where the tip appears to be currency but rather instead is a Chick tract with the suggestion that you'll pray for their soul.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#205

Post by ksenzee »

harryjo wrote: post #194
ksenzee wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't make the mistake of pronouncing "Exxon" like "exon"; you will appear unsophisticated. This is some really advanced trolling, on the level of the emperor's new clothes.

https://stallman.org/articles/exxon.html April 1 2013

Like I say, it's impressive. I might have to try it myself this Friday.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#206

Post by grandinj »

RyanZAG wrote: 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…

It's more likely he was using the "internet" to sell VHS tapes. Most probably via the form of Internet known as Beltel (I worked on Beltel for a while) and that is quite plausible.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#207

Post by mark212 »

acqq wrote: post #200
myrbergs_army wrote: post #59

Original author of the story here... Just to add that 1. yes, the reporting on Le Roux's childhood is more tentative based on a family source (well backed up by docs and images sent to me). But the fact that the same Le Roux created E4M which formed the basis of TrueCrypt is something I think I've established definitively, company and site registration trails show it very firmly (and PLR himself admits it in court, b…

But E4M is not Truecrypt, see the post of jron citing Wikipedia here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11382303 Paul Le Roux stole E4M source from SecurStar, and TrueCrypt programmers "forked" that source code. So Paul Le Roux surely didn't "write" TrueCrypt as such, isn't the current title here on HN inaccurate? Mods can we please have the real article title "He Always Had a Dark Side" here instead of the curren…

read the article before flaming. The author lays out a very well supported case for concluding that PLR wrote the E4M code then was hired by SecurStar to turn it into a commercial product. Also claims PLR was one of the TrueCrypt programmers, so yes, the title is accurate as far as what the author is claiming in the article.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#208

Post by cinquemb »

mirimir wrote: post #165
myrbergs_army wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As tptacek says, I don't view reporting like this as "doxxing." As the series hopefully shows, Le Roux was a hugely newsworthy figure for many different reasons, so reporting his background and how he got there is part of understanding where he is now. As for being nervous, many of the major players in the story are in US custody, and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively a lot of people involved want to tell their par…

To me, it's just semantics. Let's say that someone published this much information about you. And let's say that they had whatever justifications. That there was widespread agreement that it was OK. Whatever. How would you feel?

Don't you know it's only ok when a given journalist has the blessing of the status quo and doesn't use automatic means (google doesn't count anymore of course, but copypasta of random code to help one on one's search is a big no no) of releasing such information?

If such a "journalist" wanted to write (about potentially classified™ information) about people working for defense contractors who create products only a minority of people care to voice dissent but has the blessing of the status quo, it wouldn't be ok because it would put lives at danger™. There is also an exception to this for when a billionaire helps you write about such info, but only less than 1% of it will ever see the light of day, and one must consult with the thought leaders™ of the status quo in order to have a voice where all the token freedom loving organizations also supported by such billionaire will blogspam such carefully vetted position on one's behalf.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#209

Post by LyndsySimon »

kbenson wrote: post #61
falsestprophet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are assuming the violence would be carried out using senatorial powers. Senators are generally very wealthy people, and it doesn't take that much money to hire someone to kill another person[1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing#Statistics [2] 2: I have to say I was fairly hesitant to search for that data. It's not the kind of thing you want showing up in your search history...

> I have to say I was fairly hesitant to search for that data. It's not the kind of thing you want showing up in your search history...

That, in and of itself, is a very interesting phenomenon, don't you think?

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#210

Post by zzleeper »

On a slightly related question, what are you guys using instead of Truecrypt for virtual encripted disks?

I use a bit of confidential data for research, and keep the identifiers on a TC container, but since it is no longer maintained I wonder when will it stop working and if VeraCrypt/CipherShed are good or not. I don't access the data that often, so speed is not that big of a deal, but the ability to cover my back is always good (e.g. say "I used XYZ which was deemed as the best free alternative at the time")

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