Gyroscopic Investing

Very entertaining and informative article about famous hacker and his adventures with Sony.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... ntPage=all

MediumTex wrote: Very entertaining and informative article about famous hacker and his adventures with Sony.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... ntPage=all

It's a good article, and fairly accurate, considering a lot of the reporting around Anonymous and Lulzsec seems to be laughably inaccurate.  It's refreshing that reporters are actually researching these organizations, as opposed to just regurgitating lies about them.  I have heard Anonymous referred to as a terrorist organization, with a hierarchical command structure, etc, when in reality it's just usually whatever young kids decided they were pissed off and wanted to do a little online vandalism.  I'm highly skeptical of the arrests made in the US and UK.  It is much more likely that they just arrested some random people who were sitting in the Anon IRC channel, and stupid enough to login from their home computer.  I believe one of the arrests made was simply someone who had registered a domain name for them, or setup a few websites for them.

Sadly, this is what typically happens when the government wants to send a message that dissent or vandalism against corporations will not be tolerated.  They arrest a few people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and make an example out of them.

Regarding geohot, he's a smart kid, but it's pretty disappointing to see him work for a company like Facebook and quit after 8 months.  If he would have kept working there a few years he'd never have to work again in his life.  Sadly, he has probably never learned how to work a full time job before and while his parents nurtured his technical abilities, they must have neglected to teach him a few basic lessons that are important.

Storm wrote: Regarding geohot, he's a smart kid, but it's pretty disappointing to see him work for a company like Facebook and quit after 8 months.  If he would have kept working there a few years he'd never have to work again in his life.  Sadly, he has probably never learned how to work a full time job before and while his parents nurtured his technical abilities, they must have neglected to teach him a few basic lessons that are important.

I wasn't surprised he left Facebook as I would find that boring as hell too, especially that company of all places with such a useless "high school popularity" product.  But he's in his 20's so its hard to blame him for wanting to have fun as opposed to the stodgy & boring work of generating wealth.  People that impose that kind of discipline (or have it imposed) way too soon, just as those that never do any drugs, don't grow up well-adjusted.  A good example is Ramit Sethi.

MG

I read it in its entirety today. Very good.
I haven't read much about hackers since 'The Watchman' 12 years ago. I began reading a similar book about Kevin Mitnick, but put it down and never picked it up again.