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

Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 553 posts

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#301

Post by JuniorBalleg »

pjc50 wrote: post #190
JuniorBalleg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an entire population is far more homogeneous than most modern Western states, the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun (among many other benefits). It's one of those sacrifices made to accommodate diversity which is almost impossible to quantify and existentially unsettling to even try.

Struggling to work out when the nondiverse America ever existed, that Woz could have been in?

It's not binary. Mark Potok of the SPLC has a poster on his wall tracking the demographic decline of Whites in America. You don't need to look far - official population statistics, your kid's school, or your local Walmart - to see this massive, rapid demographic shift in action.

You're welcome to argue the absence of causation.

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#302

Post by ilyt »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #257
ilyt wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you haven't read or been in any post-soviet country, near perfect "ethnical cohesion", doesn't stop crime or increase trust in any way. Frankly that's arrogant and narrow-minded view; homogenous culture might cause less conflicts and problems when the culture itself is one promoting that in the first place

Hahaha. Great point. The U.S. is one of the higher-trust societies, socially, while also being extremely racially diverse. It sounds like pro-social culture and your people being rich probably matter more than race, and Eastern Europe has a critical deficit in both of those. :p

Mostly thanks to "inheriting" it from russia in form of being post-soviet satellites... it took decades for most countries (and for other it is still in progress) to get from "you need bribe or connections to get anywhere in bureaucracy" for example.

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#303

Post by sbarre »

sandworm101 wrote: post #275
ztrww wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really unsure whether doing the same thing now would have a high risk of “screwing up” your life. It’s not like he showed anyone a counterfeit ID. What he did is the same as showing a random company ID. Not exactly grounds for arrest especially if he can provide a driver’s license if asked to.

It was a counterfeit ID. If the cop reading it walks away with the reasonable, but false, belief that the person works for the dod, he has presented a counterfeit ID. If he did it to trick the cop, he has knowingly presented false information/lied to police.

And people jaywalk all the time.

Can we stop being so obtuse and only look at the letter of the law and think about the actual practical real-life consequence as a measure of severity? This was a joke, and no harm was done.

Are you really advocating for a felony offence here?

This is the same line of thinking, just reversed, that people use to say "well it's not illegal" when someone does something super shitty that actually has awful consequences.

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#304

Post by lotsofpulp »

lupire wrote: post #284
lotsofpulp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuance is that if you gift below the yearly reporting amount, it does not count towards the lifetime maximum, since it never has to be reported. So if Woz had given $10,001, then he would have had to file it, and then when he died, it would have added $10,001 towards his total lifetime gift tax exclusion from his estate (currently $13M). But if he gave $10k (or whatever yearly reporting maximum) per year until he…

That's (hard to detect) tax fraud.

No, it is perfectly legal. It is called the annual “exclusion” amount, because you get to exclude it from estate tax calculations.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

> What can be excluded from gifts?

> The general rule is that any gift is a taxable gift. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Generally, the following gifts are not taxable gifts.

>Gifts that are not more than the annual exclusion for the calendar year.

>Tuition or medical expenses you pay for someone (the educational and medical exclusions).

>Gifts to your spouse.

>Gifts to a political organization for its use.

>In addition to this, gifts to qualifying charities are deductible from the value of the gift(s) made.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#305

Post by raverbashing »

lqet wrote: post #149
b3orn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It probably amounted to a real crime. I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea how criminal law in the USA works, but why would this be a crime? He didn't fake a Department of Defence ID, he created an ID for a fictional Department of Defiance, it may look similar, it may appear as a "real" ID because it's not just a piece of paper, but it's about as real an ID as a gym membership card.

But you wouldn't board an international flight with your gym membership card.

I don't think gyms even do that anymore. It's mostly electronic tags/cards now

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#306

Post by rhaway84773 »

nouveaux wrote: post #262
jsnell wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing says "challenging the status quo" like a multi-millionaire messing with normal people who are just trying to do their job... I'm sure I when I first read this story, I thought it was hilarious. But since then, I've gained at least little bit of empathy. Think of this story from the perspective of the other people. Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as poss…

The reason why it used to be celebrated on HN, and why GP laments the change is that Woz hacked security. This is a great example of social engineering and it's in the vein of the old 80's hacker mentality. Besides for the fun story, it is a security breach that all these security personnel failed to pick up on. I agree with the GP that this kind of thing should be celebrated on HN and we should encourage the next ge…

It’s still celebrated. One of the articles with the most staying power on the HN front page I’ve seen in a while was the “owning an airline” one.

While people did debate the ethics of it, the hacking was admired because it was someone not in a position of power hacking an entity that was. It also illuminated a massive security risk which could now be fixed.

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#307

Post by moomoo11 »

dist1ll wrote: post #36
yreg wrote: post #3

> [The Secret Service agent] asked my for some picture ID. I have some fake photo ID's that a friend made for me years before, when we could make realistic photo ID's from our computers. Almost nobody else could do this because printers weren't good enough. But I had an expensive early generation dye sublimation printer and made some fake ID's for fun. I had one favorite fake ID that I'd used for almost every airplan…

Isn't it pretty irresponsible to commit a felony while you have a daughter and wife to take care of? I find his nonchalant delivery quite jarring. I don't understand what's going through his head here.

That is why he is Woz and you are.. who?

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#308

Post by hanselot »

sandworm101 wrote: post #269
ztrww wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> false ID Showing a counterfeit driver’s license, passport etc. is obviously a crime. What he did was equivalent to showing your company issued ID. Would that be a crime?

It had a logo meant to fool a casual observer into reading "department of defense". Inserting a misprint doesn't make something ok if they decide you were intending to create a false impression in a hurried cop.

Would a secret service officer be considered a casual observer?

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#309

Post by usrusr »

pell wrote: post #264
messe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still cross EU borders with just a driving licence, or government issued ID where they have them. For anybody unfamiliar with Europe, I just want to add that there aren't any checkpoints or border crossings, you just drive through or walk over. Half the time you won't even notice you're doing it. You're just supposed to have your ID on your person when you do. Ireland (and previously the UK) is the only maj…

>For anybody unfamiliar with Europe, I just want to add that there aren't any checkpoints or border crossings, you just drive through or walk over. Half the time you won't even notice you're doing it. You're just supposed to have your ID on your person when you do. The above is only true in the Schengen zone. As soon as you cross the border to a non-Schengen country or you arrive from a non-Schengen country you will…

But it also includes certain non-EU countries, like Switzerland. You won't notice having crossed the border before your phone notifies you that it just disabled data thanks to roaming charges getting capped at 50 without confirmation.

(I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.. the irony is that I used to have data roaming included in Switzerland, but the network forced me to a new plan that doesn't have that because the old one was almost but not quite complying with EU roaming rules)

Re: Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills

#310

Post by rcstank »

lupire wrote: post #284
lotsofpulp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuance is that if you gift below the yearly reporting amount, it does not count towards the lifetime maximum, since it never has to be reported. So if Woz had given $10,001, then he would have had to file it, and then when he died, it would have added $10,001 towards his total lifetime gift tax exclusion from his estate (currently $13M). But if he gave $10k (or whatever yearly reporting maximum) per year until he…

That's (hard to detect) tax fraud.

It’s not fraud at all. It’s following tax laws.
Post reply on HN