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

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

#381

Post by htag »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #183
dist1ll wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, my reaction was -- after he read you your miranda rights, why were you even talking to him without a lawyer? But after thinking about it more -- and I'm in my mid-40s -- I think what it also reminds us of is that law enforcement actually used to be a lot more reasonable -- to be clear, this may probably only apply to white people who appear as if they are not poor. But I think maybe the police (whether local or…

I don't think this jives with your comment that law enforcement use to be reasonable. I think this highlights unequal enforcement of the law, depending on who is considered undesirable.

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

#382

Post by dbingham »

scarface74 wrote: post #371
dbingham wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

That last paragraph sound like the same non committal answer I got from ChatGPT at first. That’s not meant to be a criticism, just a random aside. You do raise a fair point

Yeah, I mean, there's a good reason for that. To do the topic justice requires a lot of pretty delicate work. The only way to give a shorter answer with out tripping into dangerous territory is for it to look something like my last paragraph.

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

#383

Post by boomboomsubban »

joshmanders wrote: post #376
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…

> Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as possible, just to waste their time and then pull off a "a-ha You know who's really wasting peoples time? Secret Service and a casino security guard because he tipped with legal tender that they haven't seen before, so they think he's some counterfeiter or something. I'd fuck with authority who was too stupid to realize that…

If you worked someplace handling money and saw a bill with perforated edges, you'd definitely consider it suspicious. That doesn't require someone to be stupid.

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

#384

Post by ModernMech »

JuniorBalleg wrote: post #285
kfajdsl wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this struck a nerve because I'm an American born-and-raised PoC, but frankly I believe this is a bad opinion that is often pushed by racists (even if the idea itself isn't necessarily inherently racist). Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It's what causes PoC to be profiled by law enforcement, on average have worse outcomes for the same crimes in the…

>Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired. Of course we feel more comfortable among our own. You are far more at ease if you walk into a room to be surrounded by people just like you, rather than strangers from the other side of the wor…

I don't find this to be true in my experience. Pretty much any moderately-sized university campus in America is a counterpoint to what you're saying. These communities can be very diverse, and while it's true that you can often find various cliques that split along various demographic lines, members of diverse university communities still live, learn, and work in close proximity.

I think implicit in your comment is the assumption that people with different backgrounds are somehow defacto strangers. But what makes it all work on a university campus, imo, is that everyone has a purpose; there are no scary strangers because everyone's motivations are well-understood, since everyone on campus has a job to do. No one is really a stranger.

It doesn't matter if you are of a different color or gender, or that you come from a place I've never been to, or that you speak a language I've never heard, or that you eat food I've never tasted. My lizard brain doesn't kick in when I interact with you because you are just here to study and learn, or to help in that process.

As an example, I am a professor and I have a new colleague. He is from the other side of the world, he was born a decade before me, he eats food different from mine, he worships a different God than I do. But we get along just fine, and that's because despite all those differences, we still have more in common than not. And even if we didn't, we still have to rely on one another and work as a team to achieve a common goal.

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

#385

Post by enedil »

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…

I don't get how you inferred anybody was humiliated there.

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

#386

Post by fundad »

hueyluey wrote: post #218
sandworm101 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a false ID to law enfordement? That is a crime. Giving a forged ID to the secret service, the people in charge of detecting counterfeiting? That's just idiocy. Misspelling department of defense doesnt make the ID ok any more than printing a tiny lol in the corner of your fake dollar bills. (Also, falsely claiming a relationship with the military is downright dishonerable.)

What do you mean by "dishonerable" here? Is this an instance of how Americans love the military so much that it's difficult to understand for people from other countries (where being a military isn't different from being a shop owner, or carpenter or doctor or whatever)?

Military and police are America’s most popular social programs, have the most powerful constituencies and their budgets grow constantly.

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

#387

Post by gelstudios »

The patron saint of hackers is making the rounds again. Whether you are a fan or not, his book "iWoz" is full of these stories like trolling casino pit bosses with the pad of bills.

A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting the woz after an event at which he was a speaker.

I was surprised at how humble and patient he was with people vying for his attention, many asking for him to autograph laptops and whatever else they had at hand.

I got his attention when I asked him about tetris and we geeked out a bit over it. Thats a story for another day but I did walk away from that conversation with a prized souvenir -- an autographed $2 bill: https://imgur.com/gallery/TQo0KOi

... and a laser cut steel business card :)

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

#388

Post by fsloth »

alephnerd wrote: post #373
fsloth wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you are venting, but if you are having a hard time in your life I'm sorry you are going through that. Now, our discussion was about Woz's zany antics, but I still have to clarify some geographical things: 1. Western Europe[0] and nordics[1] are two disjoint sets of countries 2. Of 28M nordic people only roughly 1/5 is Danish. And, there is very little political cohesion between the countries, except…

Yea. It was moment of venting tbh. I just get pissed off when a handful of commentators from Scandinavia act "holier than thou" when there is still some real racism and toxic commentary around migrants. With a mom who's "Mirpuri" (the actual term is Pahari or Dogra. Mirpuri means from Mirpur Tehsil in AJK) background. I've heard down the grapevine how much it sucks for the community in DK and NO.

It is a bit weird you got triggered by this out-of-context association when we were discussing the ethics of Woz's story, but you are correct, nordics are quite racist: https://harvardpolitics.com/nordic-racism/ - I would not say there is "some real racism" but call it a pretty entrenched position unfortunately.

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

#389

Post by scarface74 »

slackfan wrote: post #378
scarface74 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why is it that “rural America” seem to hold the local police in such high regard. But think the Federal police are so bad?

Because we get a statement showing what the PD used our tax money for, every single year, vs the endless black hole of the IRS. Also we can fire and disband them if we so wish. For us "Defund the police" is not a toothless meme, it's a reality that we can implement if the police become a nuisance. For instance my town fired the entirety of its' PD a good decade ago. Counterpoint; why do city folk hold their police de…

I’ve never known federal police to stop and frisk, racial profile, be accused of police brutality or stop someone for “suspiciously” walking through his own neighborhood where the county is only 2.9% Black (my 6 foot 3 step son who grew up in the burbs all of his life), we lived in the most affluent county in the metro area (this was Atlanta metro not saying much in the grand scheme of things) and we had a household income twice the median since I work remotely for $BigTech.

But that didn’t stop them from thinking “we didn’t belong here”.

It’s the same reason NWA never wrote a song called “Fuck the FBI”…

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

#390

Post by njharman »

b3orn wrote: post #140
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…

> 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.

It's a Felony to lie to federal agent. Who doesn't know that?

  Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it's a felony crime to: make a “false statement” to an agent of the > federal government related to a federal matter.
  ...
  A “false statement” can be:
  a material omission.
  a material misrepresentation, or.
  using a fraudulent document.
Proffering a fake id when asked for a real id is clearly using a fraudulent document.
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