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He Always Had a Dark Side

mastermind.atavist.com

291–300 of 380 posts

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#291
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

I am completely out of the loop on this guy!!! I can't believe it, other than this article what's the best summary of him??

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#292
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some interesting circumstantial connections to Satoshi: Considered to be a "brilliant" programmer with a strong C++ background - Most people would call you crazy if you attempted to put a 6 billion dollar prize behind an internet facing application without memory safety Author of crypto/privacy software - E4M and possibly TrueCrypt written in C++ Experience hiding identity both online and off Millionaire -…

> South African spelling/phrasing - analyse, colour, defence, bloody hard That's common across all of the Commonwealth countries. Could easily be Australia or NZ. If he calls traffic lights 'robots' you could be certain.

I was analysing the robot and this zef prawn offered me a sweetie. Fook prawns.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#293
post #246

The submitted title was "Truecrypt was written by a international arms dealer named Paul LeRoux". That broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a single detail from the article, and it's also misleading enough that we're getting emails complaining about it. Rather than litigate what the article does or doesn't show, we've simply reverted the title. It seems particularly bad to make the title say something that the a…

The old title was wrong, the new one is devoid of any meaning. I guess the TrueCrypt connection is what got most of us interested in the piece, so something along the lines of "Truecrypt predecessor was started by international drug dealer Paul LeRoux" might have been helpful.

The article is still near the top of HN, and no one who looks at the thread will have much trouble figuring out what it's about.

If the community agreed amongst itself, obviously we'd follow suit, but it doesn't, and people are going to complain no matter what we do.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#294

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

Does he really think he can just imagine things, and then convince other people they are true?

Wikipedia says:

> The company initially planned to change its name to "Exon", in keeping with the four-letter format of Enco and Esso. However, during the planning process, it was noted that James Exon was the governor of Nebraska. Renaming the company after a sitting governor seemed ill-advised, and the second "x" was added to the new name and logo.

No mention of them wanting to name the company with a greek chi but not having that on their typewriters.

To be fair, the wikipedia claim isn't cited. Neither is rms's of course.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#295

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…

You should edit the line that implies that everyone on Reddit is a troll.

That's basically trolling in itself: "a troll like the type of person you'd find on Reddit"

Reddit fucking rocks and an AMAZING amount of quality people/content comes from Reddit...

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#296
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…

>> late 1980s [... ]arrested Paul for selling pornography online > This seems a bit odd to me Understatement of the week. As you say, it wouldn't have been on the Internet. I know nothing about the South African BBS scene of the time but it would have been very small. And selling pornography online? How would you even have gone about that? That would have been cash transactions down in the corner. For downloading por…

Back in the day, before video streaming or video downloading I used to buy anime fansubs online. I sent in a check to someone and they mailed me VHS tapes.

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#297
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, I don't understand what you're comment means. Happy to respond again if you'd clarify want you intended.

'Arms dealer': one who sells arms. The point he is making is that, regardless of what is considered legitimate, both this individual and the U.S. government are, by definition, arms dealers. Or at least that the U.S. is an arms dealer.

No. 'Arms dealer' refers to illegal arms dealers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trafficking#Notable_arms_...

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#298
post #84

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…

When do you think Le Roux first knew that you where working on this story?

[deleted]

Re: He Always Had a Dark Side

#299
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is semantics, illegal arms trafficking is a subset of the global market for arms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trafficking

nxzero said nothing about legality.

'Arms dealer' = illegal arms trafficker
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