Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adrian Lamo has died

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 248 posts

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#221

Post by ZephyrP »

VectorLock wrote: post #129
whichwalrus wrote: post #101

Sorry, this story isn't very interesting, but it really stuck with me nonetheless, and I wanted to share. Adrian had a passing romance with a friend of mine, and thus ended up traveling through the city I grew up in. This was long before Chelsea Manning, etc. I was a super shy, rather awkward teenage girl. I suppose the teenage part has changed.. but I digress. I loved the idea of mischief, but at the same time, I wa…

This is a good description of the kind of hacker Adrian was. He wasn't a write finely crafted shell code to exploit a buffer overflow in an application or deep knowledge of the esoterica of how CPUs function Spectre Meltdown kind of hacker. He'd just try the knob on a door he wasn't supposed to go through and surprise it was open.

well, to be fair, he didn't plenty of that too.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#222

Post by rimunroe »

r00fus wrote: post #192
rimunroe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lamo screwed Manning big time, but when he did, none of us who knew him were surprised. He was never a happy person, and never friendly to anyone I knew. I think his folks threw him out of the house in his teens. > Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups…

I seriously wonder how anyone can equate Adrian with Aaron. Aaron contributed to RSS, Creative Commons, and Markdown. Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me.

> Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me.

I completely agree, and I absolutely wasn't trying to draw a comparison between their actions.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#223

Post by CamperBob2 »

dmix wrote: post #214
coldtea wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice story, the kind that makes HN worth it

I sadly can't believe anything I read on the internet and I view this with suspicion for some reason...

But that would make the story even more awesome, somehow. It's about a kid who used social engineering to conjure an alternate reality out of thin air, simultaneously leading his friends through a metaphorical forbidden door and a literal one.

This is probably how myths, if not entire religions, get started. A grain of truth wrapped in a larger web of deceit, spun by an insignificant spider who doesn't even know, herself, how far it will ultimately reach.

(That aside, the site guidelines encourage its users to presume good faith, so I'm inclined to do so unless there's some actual evidence that whichwalrus's story isn't on the level.)

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#224

Post by ooajim »

throwaway2312 wrote: post #207
VonGuard wrote: post #22

So, I'm gonna lay it out here as I am having a bad day and don't feel like censoring myself. I'd known Adrian since 1998. He came to 2600 meetings in SF and was a fixture there. In that time, he generally didn't make any friends. While he was gay, he was also stalking a lady at the meetings, and being super creepy about it. Eventually, he left SF and was homeless. He got in trouble for hacking the NYT and making hims…

Is 2600Meetings still active ? I wanted to attend one of the meetings.

Yup. You can check the website.

https://www.2600.com/meetings/

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#225

Post by eganist »

arbitrage wrote: post #199
eganist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what's the public benefit afforded by your comment?

What's the public benefit of hanging around on hacker news and chatting about things in general? Why would this be any different?

Hackernews discussion is intended to be productively informative. Knowingly putting someone down on a public forum does not make anyone better for it except maybe to educate the person making the mistake and others performing in an equal manner. Considering what Adrian was dealing with, any others like him might not even benefit from reading such things; this delivery method is more likely to fail than to succeed.

It's fine to constructively criticize. But it's inherently impossible to do that with someone who's died because they're dead. And with disorders which risk social impairment, public shaming isn't the solution either; it just drives people who don't understand how to address their challenges further and further into a hole.

I figure your question was intended as both maieutic and rhetorical, but please take into account what I'm sharing with you here.

People are expected in some capacity to grow on hackernews. This comment contributed no growth value to anyone.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#226

Post by point78 »

Myrmornis wrote: post #205
tptacek wrote: post #90

Reminder: Lamo is a public figure but also a real person with real relationships with people who will read this thread. You are all commenting on a Facebook thread written by Lamo's dad about the death of his son.

> You are all commenting on a Facebook thread written by Lamo's dad about the death of his son. I think I understand why you wrote that, but I don't agree. Posts here should be thoughtful and respectful, certainly. But it is not Facebook. I am not an expert about this person who has died, but it appears his story has a public interest dimension. HN is an appropriate place for such discussion. Furthermore, I think you…

And? It's not about anything you wrote, just have a shred of decency on a comment to a father who lost his son. That's above anything you know obviously.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#227

Post by jancsika »

squarefoot wrote: post #162
whichwalrus wrote: post #101

Sorry, this story isn't very interesting, but it really stuck with me nonetheless, and I wanted to share. Adrian had a passing romance with a friend of mine, and thus ended up traveling through the city I grew up in. This was long before Chelsea Manning, etc. I was a super shy, rather awkward teenage girl. I suppose the teenage part has changed.. but I digress. I loved the idea of mischief, but at the same time, I wa…

Good hackers can expose the inconvenient difference between what is illegal from what is wrong without doing harm to anyone or anything. So thanks for sharing such a beautiful story, it perfectly explains the hacker mindset where mainstream media articles would fail miserably.

In honor of hackerdom I'll be a bit of a pest and say that stoners already have that lesson covered. :)

I think hackers reveal the unexamined difference between how people use something and what it does. E.g., people used copyright to give exclusivity to a particular publisher. But copyright itself doesn't "do" exclusivity. It instead gives the author the power to license the work as they see fit. So even if the license is a legal restatement of the golden rule, it is still backed by the full force of U.S. copyright law.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#228

Post by tzs »

benchaney wrote: post #220
ScottBurson wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the data not being available doesn't necessarily mean that people weren't killed, either. I think you're both making valid points and the truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, with certain kinds of leaks, there are potential risks to people that should be taken into account, by carefully selecting, and redacting when appropriate, the material to be leaked (which Manning didn't begin to do, nor allow anyone els…

> Well, the data not being available doesn't necessarily mean that people weren't killed, either. I generally reject arguments of this form, because: 1. In the absence of real data, they are essentially just fear mongering. 2. It violates the general principle of innocent until proven guilty, because we are assuming Chelsea Manning is guilty of getting people killed without evidence that this is the case. 3. Acceptin…

I think my point may have been unclear.

People commonly argue that Manning's leaks were justified because they exposed some cover ups, and the leaks did not harm anyone who was not doing anything illegal. They base the second half of that on nobody being able to name any specific person who was harmed.

My point is that is an impossible standard. They want absolute proof of harm before they will consider the possibility that maybe Manning should have redacted names, or left out documents that were completely irrelevant to whatever crimes and cover ups she hoped to expose.

By that standard if someone is already in a situation where they are in danger, you could leak anything about them and disclaim any responsibility if they subsequently get killed, because it might have been due do that danger they were already in.

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#229

Post by chipotle_coyote »

Myrmornis wrote: post #205
tptacek wrote: post #90

Reminder: Lamo is a public figure but also a real person with real relationships with people who will read this thread. You are all commenting on a Facebook thread written by Lamo's dad about the death of his son.

> You are all commenting on a Facebook thread written by Lamo's dad about the death of his son. I think I understand why you wrote that, but I don't agree. Posts here should be thoughtful and respectful, certainly. But it is not Facebook. I am not an expert about this person who has died, but it appears his story has a public interest dimension. HN is an appropriate place for such discussion. Furthermore, I think you…

I think the context for dang's comment is that the HN link originally went to a Facebook thread. I hope nobody from HN showed up on that thread to trash Lamo in comments that were effectively directed right to his grieving father, but...

Re: Adrian Lamo has died

#230

Post by ameister14 »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #215
ameister14 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know who else does that? Abusive people. I'm not saying you're an abusive person, but that is definitely behavior shared by abusive people. It's just an observable fact. I chose these words very carefully so you know I am not accusing you of being abusive, just associating you with abusive behavior.

> You know who else does that? Who else does what, exactly? I can't follow what "that" is supposed to refer to.

It can be applied to any behavior. I was using it to illustrate that your previous statement was associating a person with something extremely negative and you defended it by saying something to the effect of 'I never said he was x'

You kinda did, though. It's weaselly language.

Post reply on HN