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Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

reuters.com

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Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#271

Post by SamReidHughes »

atmosx wrote: post #235
SamReidHughes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When 'tptacek is wrong, he's obnoxiously wrong, especially in his inability to believe in government misbehavior, and his willingness to denigrate "message board nerds" on that sort of matter. (See also his attacks on Greenwald when the Snowden story started.) So personally I was looking forward to seeing somebody comment about him.

Yeah, I get that a lot too. Also his attitude towards open source cryptography related projects is strange and totally unjustified imho.

He's had a perfectly friendly attitude towards GPG, and in the case of others you can see ample evidence that his skepticism is justified. Maybe if the open source cryptography projects you're referring to weren't bad projects then the attitude would be strange.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#272

Post by 11001 »

paveldurov wrote: post #260
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really bad and somewhat frustrating comment (if you're trolling, nicely done). He's absolutely correct about Telegram and this is not how you run crypto contests. This isn't even a tptacek opinion, it's a "everybody who has any reputation in the crypto field" opinion. Edit: Oh, you're the Telegram employee who designed the contest. I encourage you to read moxie's blog post, and Schneiers rebuttals to crypto…

The wish to broaden the contest is understandable and already taken into account http://bit.ly/1htlEod What I was saying in the comment above, however, had nothing to do with the contest. I expressed concern about tptacek's aggressive promotion of one algorithms (branded as "modern") over the other (claimed as "anachronistic") without any substantial proof. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6941934 This is really…

Could you please provide some proof that you are who you claim you are? Like a post on your VK page? Thanks.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#273

Post by bane »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #258
bane wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He is capable of arguing with people with strongly opposing views with civility You're clearly talking about a different tptacek, widely known on this site for his coarsely abrasive, impossibly high friction, social interactions and not admitting he's wrong on issues trivial or important. He's also widely known for a being an expert in his field. All that being said, I agree with you that this site is more valuable…

tptacek, widely known on this site for his coarsely abrasive, impossibly high friction, social interactions and not admitting he's wrong on issues trivial or important. He's also widely known for a being an expert in his field. What are you talking about? Whatever caricature you're illustrating here is not Thomas Ptacek. With the way you've been talking, I would've suspected you were a newer member, but you've been a…

I'm glad to see that he's got both of us defending him.

I'm talking about the same tptacek who I've personally butted heads with where he couldn't even accept being wrong about how to make stew (looking back, that was exactly 1 year ago to the day!)

I respect tptacek very much for his domain knowledge and expertise. He has great theories on hiring practices and cooking among others. He's one of the names I look for on HN.

But he requires lots of care and effort. I have to mentally peel back about half of his posts to remove the snark and assholery and get to the juicy bits. But those bits are usually there and usually worth the effort to get to.

That's okay, I'm a grown up and can deal with high friction in order to enjoy interacting with somebody who's truly intelligent. tptacek is just one of those types that comes with lots of smarts and lots of difficult personality and that's okay.

And for the record I'm also aware that I can be rather high friction and assholish as well, and not nearly as insightful as tptacek.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#274

Post by danabramov »

11001 wrote: post #272
paveldurov wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wish to broaden the contest is understandable and already taken into account http://bit.ly/1htlEod What I was saying in the comment above, however, had nothing to do with the contest. I expressed concern about tptacek's aggressive promotion of one algorithms (branded as "modern") over the other (claimed as "anachronistic") without any substantial proof. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6941934 This is really…

Could you please provide some proof that you are who you claim you are? Like a post on your VK page? Thanks.

This comment on VK by id1 (Pavel) clearly states he participates in recent HN threads. I think it's fairly safe to assume he is who he is.

https://vk.com/roem?w=wall-20537665_23327

Here's an unedited Google Translate translation (I read it, and I think it conveys the message):

As I see it , there is not so much Anonymus as creators local competitor - TextSecure under Android . Telegram gathered a lot of users , and they're rightly fuss . The boys are torn between argument " either too new algorithm , why is it , if there is a proven " and your " algorithm either too old , why is it when new ." Nevertheless , trade on HN gives thousands of registrations Anglo-Saxons and tons of references .

I think the debate will be a good end to the competition announcement decoding traffic Telegram. Let's say I was ready to open all of my correspondence traffic since registration in Telegram and give $ 200,000 to anyone who will decipher it and tell you how . As a result Telegram or detect and close the loophole for special services, or - more likely - will receive another proof of the inviolability of their protocol

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#275

Post by sillysaurus2 »

bane wrote: post #273
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tptacek, widely known on this site for his coarsely abrasive, impossibly high friction, social interactions and not admitting he's wrong on issues trivial or important. He's also widely known for a being an expert in his field. What are you talking about? Whatever caricature you're illustrating here is not Thomas Ptacek. With the way you've been talking, I would've suspected you were a newer member, but you've been a…

I'm glad to see that he's got both of us defending him. I'm talking about the same tptacek who I've personally butted heads with where he couldn't even accept being wrong about how to make stew (looking back, that was exactly 1 year ago to the day!) I respect tptacek very much for his domain knowledge and expertise. He has great theories on hiring practices and cooking among others. He's one of the names I look for o…

EDIT: You know what, I'm not going to dignify this any further, other than to say that I don't want HN to be however you think HN should be. By saying "he requires lots of care and effort," you're discouraging people like Thomas from participating, and therefore making our community worse as a result. How would you feel if you saw someone talking like that about you?

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#277

Post by 11001 »

danabramov wrote: post #274
11001 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please provide some proof that you are who you claim you are? Like a post on your VK page? Thanks.

This comment on VK by id1 (Pavel) clearly states he participates in recent HN threads. I think it's fairly safe to assume he is who he is. https://vk.com/roem?w=wall-20537665_23327 Here's an unedited Google Translate translation (I read it, and I think it conveys the message): As I see it , there is not so much Anonymus as creators local competitor - TextSecure under Android . Telegram gathered a lot of users , and t…

Ok, thanks.

Here's another comment of his further down:

Я помню первый обзор о ВКонтакте на Хабрахабре, кажется, в 2006 году. Эксперты делились комментариями вроде "кто они такие", "еще одна соцсеть не нужна" и "на php пишут только нубы". Неудивительно, что HackerNews, построенный примерно тех же принципах (карма, ранжирование), создает чувство deja vu.

Тем не менее, будет здорово, если там объявятся не только любители поговорить, но и те, кто реально прочитает документацию к MTProto.

Which roughly translates to:

I remember the first reviews of VK back in 2006. The experts were saying "who are they?", "we don't need another social network", "only noobs write in php". It is not surprising that HN is built on the exact same principles (karma, rankings), brings up a deja vu.

However, it would be great if someone who actually read the MTProto docs can show up, and not just those who like to talk.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#278

Post by bane »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #275
bane wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad to see that he's got both of us defending him. I'm talking about the same tptacek who I've personally butted heads with where he couldn't even accept being wrong about how to make stew (looking back, that was exactly 1 year ago to the day!) I respect tptacek very much for his domain knowledge and expertise. He has great theories on hiring practices and cooking among others. He's one of the names I look for o…

EDIT: You know what, I'm not going to dignify this any further, other than to say that I don't want HN to be however you think HN should be. By saying "he requires lots of care and effort," you're discouraging people like Thomas from participating, and therefore making our community worse as a result. How would you feel if you saw someone talking like that about you?

I'm not even sure what your responding to?! In no way am I insinuating that tptacek shouldn't participate here or that his voice isn't extremely valuable. I'm not being facetious when I said I'm glad we're both defending him.

I'm logically one of the last people to defend him here having butted heads with him so much, but in fact I deeply value his presence here.

> How would you feel if you saw someone talking like that about you?

I'd probably agree with them. I'm not a high-school kid afraid of how my peers will see me and neither is tptacek. I've said as much about his communication style to him directly.

I highly doubt that tptacek doesn't have enough self-awareness to know that he's a high maintenance debate partner. There's no reason to paint him as a saint, he's just a guy. A very smart guy, but he has his foibles and flaws, which are far outweighed by his contributions. But to ignore those more difficult parts of his personality does him a disservice by not seeing him in his entirety.

I respect the entire person (as much as I can see through the limited lens of HN) not just the parts I think are praiseworthy.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#279

Post by belorn »

napoleond wrote: post #49
guelo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think one of the things you can't trust these days are comments by tptacek.

Either you're insinuating that 'tptacek is a malicious actor, or that he's incompetent. That's a pretty serious allegation to make without providing any evidence whatsoever. Do you have any? I'm sure you can dig up a few examples of things that he said which were incorrect, but very few of those will not have been followed by a correction at some point, and either way your insinuations seem to go beyond "being wrong…

> Either you're insinuating that 'tptacek is a malicious actor, or that he's incompetent.

There is a large area missed called psychological bias. People who has close friends working in highly controversial areas has a tendency to become a bit irrational in the view of the controversy. An attack on the NSA becomes an attack of the friend. If NSA is immoral and wrong, the friends choice of occupation must be wrong, thus the friend must be wrong, thus an attack on NSA is an attack of the friend.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#280

Post by morganherlocker »

pasbesoin wrote: post #134
dergachev wrote: post #114

If it only cost $10m to bribe one of the biggest security companies around, how much does it cost to bribe a single open source developer who volunteers on tools like OpenSSL? What if you add blackmail to the mix? Makes me realize that we need bitcoin-style "hack or bruteforce our encryption schemes and you can legitimately get paid lots of money" bug bounties.

This is why you want some people who are not primarily motivated by money. (Neither necessarily ascetics.) In turn, why you want a society where a decent quality of life is not just obtainable but reliable without an all-consuming level of competition with others. (E.g. an independent researcher can actually gain access to and participate in a large and reasonably priced health insurance risk pool. And where money is…

> In turn, why you want a society where a decent quality of life is not just obtainable but reliable without an all-consuming level of competition with others.

Is financial instability really a problem for most people qualified for this type of work? I imagine most of these people are approaching or well within the 6 figure range and that accepting some sort of bribe would just be icing on top.

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