Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by posterboy » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #288

nouveaux wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think any security breach was demonstrated here. Now, Woz was obviously an amazing hacker back in the day and has a reputation of being a good person. So one would imagine there are stories that show him being really clever that are, you know, actually clever rather than just showing off an information asymmetry about trivia (re: these sheets of $2 bills). Where the punchline is something wholesome, rather th…

> him humiliating strangers who have done literally nothing wrong.

Seems to be an opportunity if good faith predicts that they won't do him any serious wrong.

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

#362

Post by iso1210 » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

KyeRussell wrote: post #111

ramraj07 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is using fake IDs to board airplanes a joke? Only because we are mostly sure this particular man is an innocent manchild, but how exactly does that generalize?

You only think that it’s not a joke because over 20 years ago some people committed the single most successful act of terrorism in recent history. Was Woz meant to look into the future and be mindful of your presumably American sensitivities?

Bush and the Congress in general certainly did commit the single most successful act of terrorism in recent history. I'm not sure how showing ID would have prevented that though. The US public brought it on themselves, and today's world is a world away from the hacking culture of the 1980s

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

#363

Post by dbingham » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #232

dbingham wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.

When everyone comes from the same background and/or culture there is a shared understanding. Mix two different cultures and you have less shared background mix in 100 and you have little. It's not a race issue when this is experienced in Africa/Japan/Sweden/Finland. Calling new idea to you racist is racist. Most of the times the word racist is used it is used incorrectly and often in a racist way.

It's not a new idea to me. It's an idea I've encountered many times, often propping up arguments of various kinds against pluralistic societies - which is an argument implicit in the comment above. Those arguments lead directly to ideas around ethnonationalism and segregating societies by cultural background, which is a direct analog for ethnicity.

There's a straight line between that argument - which again, almost always gets through around with out any kind of citations or research support - and ethnic cleansing. It's directly attached to racist ideas. Similar to social darwinism, it's something that seems like relatively harmless common sense on the surface, but leads to horrific implications when followed to its logical conclusion.

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

#364

Post by 0x445442 » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #244

dereg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t help but shake my head at most of these comments. There was a time when we celebrated anecdotes like this here on Hacker News. I’ve seen this story circulated many times but this is the first time I’ve seen this sort of reaction. These aren’t rose colored glasses, anyone can look up threads of old in which we cheered such defiance toward authority. People are frothing to frame this story with 2023 glasses and…

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…

This was Woz being Woz. Striking it rich didn’t change him. This very behavior is the reason Apple exists. Respectfully, lighten up.

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

#365

Post by georgeburdell » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #156

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.

> the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.

Have you ever nodded your head in agreement at the assertion that the middle east/Africa/etc is so screwed up because the colonial powers drew arbitrary borders?

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

#366

Post by strogonoff » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #94

Lots of timid, humorless folks having trouble imagining not being a sheep and always coloring inside the lines. I for one wish there were more real people around, living life for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Like we were intended to live.

The story about Wozniak tipping perforated $2 bills is about a person who breaks the pattern by behaving very suspiciously after fully satisfying the initial profiling measures. It is funny in how that puts people around him into an awkward position, but make the protagonist subtly different (e.g., say he has much darker skin, some innate attribute that reveals poor upbringing, or whatever else is used for discrimination in your place and time) and the story may not have had a happy ending. How many stories would we never read about for that reason?

When the element of comedy hinges on hero being privileged it doesn’t mean it’s not funny, but it does prompt a thought experiment as to whether a world where there’s no such profiling and everyone is treated equal base trust is possible, and if so whether such a story could be funny in that world. Taking high-trust societies I can think of as examples, I suspect either total surveillance or high value placed on following protocols sincerely with the goal of not creating awkwardness would be implied, in which case probably not.

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

#367

Post by dbingham » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:26 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #348

dbingham wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.

I knew I read something somewhere and this is the closest I could find. But I think it’s related. So when I asked ChatGPT > Are countries with less racial diversity more likely to have a larger safety net” because my GoogleFu was failing me, of course it gave me a non controversial generic answer. But when I asked it for citations it gave me this > A 2018 study published in the journal Social Science Research, which…

That's very circumstantial evidence that requires more examination. Is that a direct result of the diversity - or of the history that generated that diversity in the first place?

In most countries that are ethnically diverse, that diversity was created through various forms of colonialism. Often with racial imperialism deeply ingrained in it. Which means those countries have long running strains of racist ideas and ideologies that forms the foundations of the ethnic "in group" and "out group".

Which is not to say that ethnic strife doesn't exist in non-colonial countries as well, but that this line of thinking and examination is a) extremely complex, b) inextricable from the history of the systems under examination, c) inextricable from deep histories of racist thought - often imposed by colonnial or imperialist powers, and d) similar to social darwinism in that it is often presented as common sense, but leads to some very dark places when taken, unexamined, to its logical conclusion.

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

#368

Post by fsloth » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

hnfong wrote: post #347

fsloth wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most definetly, maturity and actual level of danger. I don’t think anything Woz has done is moderately dangerous. If they wanted to lock him up I’m sure he could call to a competent lawyer and state he is a respectable citizen who co-founded the friggin Apple . Woz has an extremely long history of egging people of authority and I don’t think he’s ever been to court from those escapades (please correct me if I’m wrong…

Maybe you're right that his actual risk is non-existent because some people are more equal than others. I would hope we're not in such a world though.

This was not as much about privilege than about Woz having a life long experience of trying to bend conventions and rules and probably had a good intuition how far he could goof off given his social and financial status etc.

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

#369

Post by cactusplant7374 » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

drdec wrote: post #351

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if they had apprehended Woz he would probably had a lawyer to bail him out and smooth things over. One can have a good lawyer but that lawyer cannot change the facts of the case.

A lawyer can help you decide which facts to reveal and which to withhold. A good lawyer will prevent you from making the state's case for them.

Facts in my comment refer to the information the prosecutor has at their disposal.

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

#370

Post by jameshart » Sun, Jan 29, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

ztrww wrote: post #191

sandworm101 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was before we knew that real people suffer after pulling similar stunts. We all know of someone who did something stupid and has faced a lifetime of consiquence. Nobody dares put a fake bomb in a school locker (Woz did that) or give false documents to police for fun. Such things are no longer jokes. They screw up entire lives. I used to ride fast motorcycles. I know people who ran from the police for fun. Better…

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.

What happened to ‘don’t talk to the cops without a lawyer ever?’

Is there an ‘unless you’re Woz and it might be funny’ exception to that rule?

The fact is there is, and always has been, a ‘wealthy white guy’ exception to that rule and these kinds of shenanigans just draw attention to it.