What a Hacker Stole from Me

I dunno, that reads a little too simple to me. People aren't magical black boxes of mysterious drives and unfathomable causes, they're components of a larger system and reflections of their environment.

Speaking as a reformed 'teen who wanted to watch the world burn', for some it isn't simple omnidirectional malice, but rather a deep and confusing sense that the world is out to get you (spoiler; in some ways it absolutely is) and an instinct to throw a haymaker just so you feel you didn't go down without a fight.

Once this kind of person begins investigating the causes of their discontent - I myself have come to the conclusion that outdated institutions and capitalism are prime suspects - you can do quite a bit more to focus down that energy on the deserving. If you're young and/or dumb enough to not know the difference between the mynoise guy and 'the system' it's almost a forgivable mistake.

That said, from a practical standpoint, yes. Some people just kinda suck real bad. The why isn't always going to get you closer to a cure.

Universal connectivity was the internet’s biggest promise and it turned out to be its biggest flaw. It turns out if you allow literally anyone on this planet to walk up to your front door, you will end up with the world’s criminals, psychopaths, you know, the ones in a more civilized time would be driven out of town by townsfolk wielding pitchforks, all hanging out on your porch figuring out how to pick your lock, or just to spray paint your house for the lulz and cred.

Look around and you will see every piece of cybersecurity knowledge assumes your porch will be inhabited by bad actors and there is nothing to stop them, so you absolutely need to harden your server as if you are a bank. Have you ever lived somewhere you genuinely don’t need to lock your front door to feel safe? I have, it was amazing, and it depresses me to no end to see the polar opposite to be what is expected on the internet. We were promised a world of peace and unity and total freedom of information but instead we got the tyranny of the petty cyberdelinquent, with no way to enforce prosocial values as we ought to do in a sane society. “On the internet no one knows you are a dog” was a warning, but we would be in a much better world if it’s only dogs we have to share an internet with. When humans get low they can get way lower than the worst dogs ever born.

We are already seeing a Brazilification of the internet. Crime is rampant, so you live in a gated community with private security if you can afford it. On the internet the name of this private security operation is Cloudflare. I hate one private company becoming the de facto gatekeeper of the internet but I cannot blame any individual website (including the one in the article) for using Cloudflare. It’s the thin orange line between a somewhat usable service and getting knocked off the internet by smart fridges every other day because some kid somewhere on the planet got bored.

How will this end? I honestly don’t know.

Feel for the guy. I had a couple of long owned domains stolen recently. They were so low value to anyone but me though, it makes me wonder why someone would bother.

The unfair match between good and bad has most likely been a conundrum for thousands of years. Multiple solutions has been proposed as to how to deal with the bad ones, including; kill them, forgive them, educate and reform them - but nothing really seems to work.

One solution might be to gather them all up and send them to another planet were they can live as they please without bothering the good ones - and some might suggest that this is exactly what they did and here we are :)