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

Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 98 posts

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#61

Post by CliffStoll »

snowchaser wrote: post #15
pi-rat wrote: post #7

Such a fun and enthusiastic guy. I’ve one of his klein bottles from like 20 years ago, think he still sells them.

I just bought one a few months ago after putting it off for years. He sent the most charming hand written note and a series of selfies proving that he personally packed it! A true gem.

Those photos are for me as well, Chaser of Snow. Whenever I make a missteake, the pictures show what I did rongg.

And I celebrate every Klein Bottle order by walking around my backyard garden … puts me in the right mood.

Cheers, Cliff

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#62

Post by empthought »

CliffStoll wrote: post #55
Peacefulz wrote: post #25

One of my favorite books is "The Cuckoo's Egg". I read it at least yearly. Cliff Stoll has had an incredible impact on my interests. I'm happy to see him doing talks.

And my thanks to you, Peaceful Lulz. I had fun writing that book, and occasionally do a talks. Couldn’t resist a 40th anniversary spoutathon at defcon! -Cliff

I read your book when I was ten years old! I was later stoked to find our computer system at school was a Unix machine, so I could try some of the commands you explained in the story, like ps and sendmail.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#63

Post by CliffStoll »

Moru wrote: post #6
CliffStoll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite welcome, Red Beard. I had fun doing that spoutathon. Meeting old friends at DefCon. Way fun.

Yes, thank you! Our whole family of nerds enjoyed it and I had to explain quite a few things to daughter but not the over head projector at least, she did bump into that tech in school for some art project. She just installed linux on the laptop for university study and got to hear about what people used before "more" and "less" :-)

Smiles to you and your family, Moru — you’re now passing along the good word to the next generation. Heart be still…

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#64

Post by CliffStoll »

Quai wrote: post #12
CliffStoll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite welcome, Red Beard. I had fun doing that spoutathon. Meeting old friends at DefCon. Way fun.

You are on my short-list of people I look up to. Thank you!

Does “short” modify “list” or “people” ?

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#65

Post by CliffStoll »

chris_wot wrote: post #30
CliffStoll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite welcome, Red Beard. I had fun doing that spoutathon. Meeting old friends at DefCon. Way fun.

You are a wonderful, wonderful person. Your book is one of my favourite books I've read, ever. Thank you so much for writing it!

Your kindness reflects back to you, Chris: I thank you for brightening my morning. Now, if only I had a biscotti…. -Cliff

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#67

Post by ssl-3 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #45
ssl-3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book is brilliant. Also worth mentioning is the rather dramatic PBS Nova episode from 1990, The KGB, the Computer, and Me -- starring, of course, Cliff Stoll. It's an entertaining take of the same topic. I couldn't find a way to pay for a copy of it[], but this one on YouTube is pretty clean compared to the state of many other old NTSC things on our modern interweb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW8YBrH4Q6o []:…

There was a British program as well. Sadly my copy got mangled by our VCR and I haven’t found it anywhere online.

Do you know what was it called, and when/where it aired?

It is possible that some here have different methods for finding things.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#68

Post by CliffStoll »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #41

I would not take the advice of somebody, if that persons basement is not full of klein-bottles. Everything else is just surface level ..

My kids don't take the advice of anyone who has Kleinbottles in their crawlspace, fdsa. And I doubt if removing those glass manifolds would have much effect. -C

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#69

Post by CliffStoll »

wglb wrote: post #50

I saw him speak at the Dayton Hamvention two times. Absolute fun and like no other. When I was CSO at Relativity, I conducted security awareness training for all, and gave each one a copy of Cuckoo’s Egg.

There's nothing like speaking to the choir. When you have the same common denominator, it makes storytelling easy.

The Defcon ham radio village was packed -- I picked up a lot of info on meshtastic. Last night set up a node in my attic.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#70

Post by CliffStoll »

giov4 wrote: post #35

Thank you Cliff! I had shivers most of the time during the talk, it was touching me from the inside and flipping me back like a latex glove. And while I knew your story I confess I listened to you for the first time. It was the most amazing cyber space trip ever, feeling those copper lines and understanding you could interface with their content. You simply represent what a hacker is, I'm getting older and loosing mo…

And my warm thanks to you, Giov. As you realize, in that talk I probably covered 5 percent of what actually happened. But that's storytelling.

Like you, as I've grown older, I cherish those times when my old-school skills are still useful - whether in computing, physics, or electronics. And there's so many new goodies that I'm never bored.

Anyways - how often do you get a chance to show a slide rule to a thousand people? Cheers, -Cliff

Post reply on HN