Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job • Hacker News Board

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#121

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 12:29 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #72

crag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An the same goes for antisemitism. In America, [publicly] write anything critical of the Israeli government and you are labeled an anti-Semite.

Criticizing the actions of any government is what it is, but many critics of Israel go so far as to say there should be no Jewish state, which in effect means the Jews should be a people without a homeland, forever vulnerable to extermination by the Gentiles they are forced to live amongst as an eternal minority. That alone is suspicious as it carries the shadow of antisemitism, but once you throw in explicit support…

Criticizing the entire idea of a theocracy, and that a religion should (of course) have a homeland to dominate, does not make you an antisemite, nor covered with antisemitism "shadow." More an antisemitism smear.

Now, I am suspicious of the people who are irate about Israel as a Jewish state, but are all about the Dalai Lama. I don't see how that makes sense unless you have something against Jewish people.

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#122

Post by sn0rd » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 1:11 AM UTC

tesseractive wrote: post #89

sn0rd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That whole Apple thing was staged. It started as a thought experiment over beers and was carried to its natural conclusion in the name of page views and awareness. Wired has oscillated between relevant and annoying for many, many years now. The type of attack they 'documented' is well-known and has been discussed in many circles. This is part of the reason they've had so many quotes from 'the hacker'. It's all about…

Is this your pet theory, or do you have some way of documenting that it was staged? And do you have examples of records on the internet where this attack was discussed before? I'm not saying that you are mistaken, nor am I saying that you are lying. But I can't accept an assertion like that at face value without seeing some supporting evidence.

I can accept that. I don't have anything that I'm willing to share. To be sure, I'm not suggesting that any of the companies (Apple, Google, Etc.) were willing participants.

Likewise, if you're looking for a discussion of this exact implementation of exploiting the trust relationships created by users of cloud services, you'll not find it.

That said, exploiting trust relationships that users naturally create in the cloud, is common. This is just one specific attack, designed to get page views and raise awareness.

It worked flawlessly. Life is but a dream.

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#123

Post by ceol » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 3:12 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #120

ceol wrote: post #111

> Today, Ryan Singel, the editor at Wired's Threat Level > blog responded to my blog post, but incorrectly frames > my criticism as if it were solely directed at Quinn > Norton and her coverage of Cryptocat. Considering about half of your original article was strictly discussing Norton's coverage, I can see where he got that idea. Then your original piece includes this bit: > It isn't clear why Norton felt it wasn't…

That's an attack on the author, don't you think? (Shrug) Quinn effectively attacked and discredited herself by posting that Tweet. It's fair to bring it up when suggesting that she might not be the most qualified person to write articles on subjects related to cryptography and information security. If there are any subjects that don't benefit from uninformed opinions posted by dilettantes, cryptography and security w…

    > Quinn effectively attacked and discredited herself by 
    > posting that Tweet.

That comes off rather victim-blamey. Nothing about what she tweeted paints her as ill-informed. In fact, quite the opposite: I would argue the crypto community is very privileged. It requires higher level education in a STEM field and access to modern computers.

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#124

Post by bloaf » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 3:16 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #120

ceol wrote: post #111

> Today, Ryan Singel, the editor at Wired's Threat Level > blog responded to my blog post, but incorrectly frames > my criticism as if it were solely directed at Quinn > Norton and her coverage of Cryptocat. Considering about half of your original article was strictly discussing Norton's coverage, I can see where he got that idea. Then your original piece includes this bit: > It isn't clear why Norton felt it wasn't…

That's an attack on the author, don't you think? (Shrug) Quinn effectively attacked and discredited herself by posting that Tweet. It's fair to bring it up when suggesting that she might not be the most qualified person to write articles on subjects related to cryptography and information security. If there are any subjects that don't benefit from uninformed opinions posted by dilettantes, cryptography and security w…

I don't know if I'd put it quite that way. It is an attack on the author, but attacks are not automatically invalid. We must ask the question "Was Soghoian's attack legitimate?"

I could comfortably answer yes. Soghoian could not come up with a reasonable explanation for Quinn's decision to not publish criticisms of the program. He therefore hypothesized that the author simply did not respect the people offering the criticism. He then produced a quote from Quinn which would support that hypothesis. If Soghoian were incorrect in that assessment, the Wired response should have pointed that out.

We must also realize that this means Soghoian isn't quite right in claiming his first criticism was about tech news in general. He did specifically criticize Wired, and therefore Wired is well within its rights to respond. Wired's allegations of sexism, however, was definitely not legitimate.

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#125

Post by neurotech1 » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 3:47 AM UTC

nopassrecover wrote: post #4

Without a lot of prior context, this seems like a clear-headed rebuttal to an otherwise pretty low ad hominem attack. On a specific note, to characterise someone as sexist because they disagree with someone who happens to be a woman is in my opinion itself one of the most egregious examples of both sexism (for reasons I'll detail) and libel (for the damaging political and social impact of being branded with such a la…

I've known Quinn Norton well enough to know she is intelligent and hard working. My view of the article was that it was more about the TSA security response to an author of a cryptochat software than a specific endorsement of the software itself. Soghoian's blog post was inflammatory and in my opinion, wrong.

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#126

Post by revelation » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 4:00 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #123

CamperBob2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an attack on the author, don't you think? (Shrug) Quinn effectively attacked and discredited herself by posting that Tweet. It's fair to bring it up when suggesting that she might not be the most qualified person to write articles on subjects related to cryptography and information security. If there are any subjects that don't benefit from uninformed opinions posted by dilettantes, cryptography and security w…

> Quinn effectively attacked and discredited herself by > posting that Tweet. That comes off rather victim-blamey. Nothing about what she tweeted paints her as ill-informed. In fact, quite the opposite: I would argue the crypto community is very privileged. It requires higher level education in a STEM field and access to modern computers.

Since we have that sorted out, can we then come to the core point of your argument here? Namely, what does this have to do with bad or good crypto?

Cryptography is math. Its no soft science where someone can push his agenda through careful interpretation of statistics. The background of the people researching it is irrelevant.

But none of that is important. Important is what happens when you use terrible crypto in a terrible country: your data will be siphoned off at the backend and western IT people with the same high level education will trivially decipher it.

And that is why its necessary to criticize people pushing magic crypto systems. It literally kills!

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#127

Post by alttag » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 4:27 AM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #31

mistercow wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are at the stage, that merely acknowledging someone's sex or race will earn you these labels. That in itself is too broad a generalization though, because there are many times when mentioning someone's race/sex is, due to context, subtly racist/sexist. Generally, if you mention someones race or sex and that information is not actually relevant in any way to what you're saying, you are helping to perpetuate stereo…

Wow. The irony of discussing prejudice and in the same breath calling skinheads racists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinhead Please, please, please, read that page. Not only to save yourself and others the ignorance of believing skinheads are racists, but also because there's a culture and a people that will be forever denigrated because the media and parroting readers will continue to perpetuate this stereotype.

Interesting. The GP's usage is aligned with every instance I've encountered over the past 20-odd years (in the U.S.), while the Wikipedia entry appears to have a European focus and is starkly different from my understanding of U.S.-ian denotation and connotation of the term.

See, e.g., Merriam-Webster: "2: a usually white male belonging to any of various sometimes violent youth gangs whose members have close-shaven hair and often espouse white-supremacist beliefs."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skinhead

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#128

Post by Johngibb » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 4:51 AM UTC

hluska wrote: post #105

Johngibb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but I find it puzzling that there's basically a handbook for a subculture trying to be different. It seems like a logical impossibility for a subculture to actually be unique and different, when there's essentially a dress code (short hair, levis, dr martens). I'm not trying to make any value judgements on the subculture, just trying to understand. Maybe the point is that the subculture / group itself is u…

When I was young, I was a very shy kid with a stutter. Needless to say, school wasn't always the most pleasant place. By the time I hit high school, I was straight up angry. I was so sick of being beat up and called 'fag' that I resolved to be different. So, I became a punk and started going to as many punk shows as possible. All of a sudden, I certainly was not one of the cool kids, but I was part of a group that wa…

I understand, and this helps me resolve a contradiction of understanding I've had for a while. I always thought of the sardonic saying "I want to be different, just like everyone else." I get it though - the idea is to still identify with a group, just not the mainstream (default?) group. But the group still has common values by which it can be identified.

As another commenter pointed out - I also hadn't realized that unique can also mean "not typical." I've always interpreted it as one of a kind, and it makes a lot more sense recognizing this definition.

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#129

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 4:51 AM UTC

hluska wrote: post #105

Johngibb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but I find it puzzling that there's basically a handbook for a subculture trying to be different. It seems like a logical impossibility for a subculture to actually be unique and different, when there's essentially a dress code (short hair, levis, dr martens). I'm not trying to make any value judgements on the subculture, just trying to understand. Maybe the point is that the subculture / group itself is u…

When I was young, I was a very shy kid with a stutter. Needless to say, school wasn't always the most pleasant place. By the time I hit high school, I was straight up angry. I was so sick of being beat up and called 'fag' that I resolved to be different. So, I became a punk and started going to as many punk shows as possible. All of a sudden, I certainly was not one of the cool kids, but I was part of a group that wa…

[deleted]

Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job

#130

Post by ceol » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 4:59 AM UTC

revelation wrote: post #126

ceol wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quinn effectively attacked and discredited herself by > posting that Tweet. That comes off rather victim-blamey. Nothing about what she tweeted paints her as ill-informed. In fact, quite the opposite: I would argue the crypto community is very privileged. It requires higher level education in a STEM field and access to modern computers.

Since we have that sorted out, can we then come to the core point of your argument here? Namely, what does this have to do with bad or good crypto? Cryptography is math. Its no soft science where someone can push his agenda through careful interpretation of statistics. The background of the people researching it is irrelevant. But none of that is important. Important is what happens when you use terrible crypto in a…

Well, the background of crypto researchers was core to Quinn's "privilege" tweet. That's one of the points the OP author touched on in his response-response, so it was relevant here.

And of course it's necessary to scrutinize people pushing crypto systems or tools that claim to do something no one has been able to do before! That's not what the Wired post was about, though. It was about how the OP author specifically targeted the Wired piece's author and made it seem like she was either too incompetent to write an article about Cryptocat or that she wrote the article because she hates the crypto community (still don't understand how he came to that conclusion.)