He named his BBS "TacoLand". He should definitely play up this angle...maybe campaign on a taco cart on every corner. I know people who will vote for him for that alone. This piece is a disaster. It's an excerpt from a soon to be released book, it's light on facts about O'Rourke and is at least equally about Cult of the Dead Cow, it's trying to make things sound more nefarious than they were, and it's playing the gui…
I think "TacoLand" has a meaning that could be awkward. The food can be a metaphor for genitalia or for the attached humans. For example a tacofest, much like a sausagefest, is a gathering in which one sex is greatly overrepresented compared to the other. Meat goes in a taco. So, one can guess what was featured on his BBS.
Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
221–230 of 400 posts
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#222Why are all the articles about Beto about how cool and antiestablishment he is? Just absolutely nothing about what he really intends to do, how he intends to do it, and most importantly, how do we reconcile his conservative voting record with this contrary image he presents?
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are in a world where the exact same video of Beto skateboarding was posted by both opponents and supporters and each saw what they wanted in it. I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate. Recall that “hacking” was a bit of a problem in 2016.
> I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate He’s a candidate in a primary. Big difference in the audiences.
The Democratic primary electorate is probably the segment of the population with the strongest negative impact around the 2016 election hacking that was evoked in the grandparent post, so while true your comment reinforces rather than negates the point.
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#224Beto has taken more donations from oil and gas companies than any other Democrat. The only politician who's taken more is Republican Ted Cruz. His vagueness on many issues is partly due to how beholden he is to his donors.
I wonder how much of that is an artifact of running in Texas.
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
That will certainly be brought up in the campaign, but it was brought up in his House races and the Senate race and didn't seem to have much of an impact.
It was a close race, and he lost. That seems like an impact.
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society glamorizes hackers hard . Have you ever seen War Games? The Matrix? Live Free or Die Hard? Mr Robot? Blackhat? Any recent spy movie? What about the multitude of other movies/shows where hackers aren't the focus, but are certainly glamorized, a la NCIS, CSI, Limitless, etc. There's an entire genre of film & television about hackers and they are almost always portrayed as cool, attractive, powerful people with…
I'm sad that you failed to mention the original /Hackers/ movie as well as /Swordfish/ -- two staples of Defcon movie nights.
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#227Having been involved in the community for most of my life, my very first thought was "oh that's cool he's one of us" and then I remembered that historically hackers have been phenomenally bad people to give any kind of real power to.
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#228CdC has always controlled a candidate in every presidential election... HN needs to catch up.
[1] Fun fact, did you know that some historical uses of the word "fact" are more as an antonym to "opinion" than as a qualification of a statement's truth value?
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
That will certainly be brought up in the campaign, but it was brought up in his House races and the Senate race and didn't seem to have much of an impact.
It was a close race, and he lost. That seems like an impact.
Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group
#230He might just be the guy who understands technology, privacy and cryptography. Or is that too much to ask for?
Andrew Yang knows about it, check him out https://www.yang2020.com