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“I will slaughter you”

daniel.haxx.se

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Re: “I will slaughter you”

#201

Post by david422 »

nullc wrote: post #37

I'm sorry to hear that. libCurl is great and my life is better for it. It's really best to not reply to the mentally ill people (and you can be pretty sure anyone sending something like the first is at least temporarily mentally ill). It can sometimes be extremely tempting, I know-- especially when they've managed to say something almost perfectly constructed for pithy comeback. But it will not help you and it will n…

> It's really best to not reply to the mentally ill people

This IMO is the best way to deal with a lot of emails. I have some public software that is literally innocuous, and yet occasionally I get some very angry emails. An example: a small game where people think the game/computer is cheating (it's not).

If someone fires off an angry, irrational email to you, they aren't looking for a rational response - they are looking for a debate, or a fight, or an outlet. It's best to let them move on.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#203

Post by Vinnl »

ProAm wrote: post #169
shin_lao wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are dealing with a person with mental illness, because nothing is coherent. It's all made up. That's why you don't answer that kind of mail, the goal is to trigger a reaction from you.

> It's all made up. I think its the opposite, I think its an unqualified contractor writing code he doesn't understand for complex systems and was subsequently hacked. I see this a lot with people bidding on contracts then hiring staff/developers after it's awarded to duct tape a system together that barely works and is full of holes.

I'm personally not very well-known, but I work for someone who is, and on a project that gets quite a lot of attention because of it. It's surprisingly common that people show up with extraordinary and incoherent stories. Given the author's name and email address are plastered all over, it is not surprising that such people would find him too.

An article was shared here a while ago that went into that as well: https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/

(Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22280753)

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#205

Post by hobofan »

mimimi31 wrote: post #196
hobofan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My social media bubble is one that comparatively spends a lot of thought on maintainter/contributor appreciation, and I've literally never heard that complaint. No open source maintainer is so busy that they don't have the time to respond to a ever so rare genuine thank you with a "Thanks, glad you appreciate it!".

I can kind of understand where they're coming from. I've had people create issues or leave comments on random commits for the sole purpose of expressing thanks, which can get annoying in a bigger project. Especially when there are a few hundred people watching the repository that now each receive multiple emails they aren't interested in. That said, I still do appreciate people taking the time to express thanks when…

Yes, there are obviously some ways to express gratitude that are preferable to others, but as long as the entitled/ungrateful/"you are _supposed_ to do things this way" comments outnumber the thankful ones, I won't start complaining about them.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#206

Post by graywh »

zach_garwood wrote: post #185
dmingod666 wrote: post #36

'man curl' lists Daniel. I think morons that don't know what curl is only see the 'haxx.se' domain and think it's some hacker.. it's sad a person who's written a tool used by so many people and systems everyday has to deal with nonsense like this.

The thing that confuses me about that faulty line of thinking is why would a hacker include a license under their name with the software they use to hack you? What sort of gentleman hacker would follow this legal procedure in the process of illegally compromising your machine? It would be as if a burgler stole all of your stuff but left you a contract so you could legally give them ownership. I just don't understand…

white hat hackers -- we got manners and shit

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#207

Post by GistNoesis »

batch12 wrote: post #191
GistNoesis wrote: post #158

After reading it a few times, I think it's not about some script kiddie using curl to hack into his system. Although I condemn Al Nocai's method, I feel for him and I am inclined to adopt the contrarian opinion that he probably got screwed because of the bad quality of curl. Curl had some remote exploit last year, and curl is used everywhere as the author reminds (often as libcurl). https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/0…

Why couldn't someone who doesn't want to use an open source library just write their own? Just because it exists doesn't mean you are forced to use it--

Most often it's a dependency of a dependency. The library you really want to use, is using the library you don't want to use. Economically it's not possible to not depend on anything, so you take some risk, and hope it doesn't later bites you back.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#208

Post by injb »

There's a valuable lesson in this: always reply! I wouldn't have dreamed of replying to an email like that, since I wouldn't expect to get any satisfaction from the sender. But incredibly he responded with what is probably more than enough info to secure a conviction, assuming he can be identified.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#210

Post by AtlasBarfed »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #190
Tepix wrote: post #23

Seems like a death threat from an icloud.com address. Chances are the real name and location of the sender is available to the authorities (with consent by a judge) from Apple.

Relatedly, someone on the blog posted a comment that it might be more effective to report him to Apple than to turn a credible death threat over to law enforcement! Comments here seem acknowledge that he's delusional, but he may very well have lost a huge contract. He claims he's lost family, friends, house, and can't go back to his home country. What would Apple's move be? To lock him out without warning or due proc…

I wonder what the market is for a sort of super-it lawyer service, that affords the protections of legal counsel in order to secure your data across multiple platforms and protect you from deplatforming as you describe, where they can take YOUR data, and is protected by legal counsel so that it generally can't be deplatformed by governmental entities.

Encryption has a sort of brutal effectiveness at doing this if you distribute copies of your data, but it is hard to maintain and has exposure in extreme events with your health.

Encryption + distributed data + legal protections from counsel could be an offering. It might be a "big fish" service though.

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