Haha. I would love it if I had the time to play. Perhaps next year. Thanks for the ping, though. I’ve forwarded this on to a few of my coworkers who play CTFs.
I’d love to if I hadn’t lost my memory, including of hacking, to that injury. I never relearned it since I was all-in with high-assurance security at that point which made stuff immune to almost everything hackers did. If I still remembered, I’d have totally been down for a Lobsters hacking crew. I’d bring a dozen types of covert channels with me, too. One of my favorite ways to leak small things was putting it in plain text into TCP/IP headers and/or throttling of what otherwise is boring traffic vetted by NIDS and human eye. Or maybe in HTTPS traffic where they said, “Damn, if only I could see inside it to assess it” while the data was outside encoded but unencrypted. Just loved doing the sneakiest stuff with the most esoteric methods I could find with much dark irony.
I will be relearning coding and probably C at some point in future to implement some important ideas. I planned on pinging you to assess the methods and tooling if I build them. From there, might use it in some kind of secure coding or code smashing challenge.
I’m having a hard time unpacking this post, and am really starting to get suspicious of who you are, nickpsecurity. Maybe I’ve missed some background posts of yours that explains more, and provides better context, but this comment (like many others) comes off…almost Markovian (as in chain).
“If I hadn’t lost my memory…” — of all the people on Lobsters, you seem to have the best recall. You regularly cite papers on a wide range of formal methods topics, old operating systems, security, and even in this post discuss techniques for “hacking” which, just sentences before “you can’t remember how to do.”
You regularly write essays as comments…some of which are almost tangential to the main point being made. These essays are cranked out at a somewhat alarming pace. But I’ve never seen an “authored by” submitted by you pointing outside of Lobsters.
You then claim that you need to relearn coding, and “probably C” to implement important ideas. I’ve seen comments recently where you ask about Go and Rust, but would expect, given the number of submissions on those topics specifically, you’d have wide ranging opinions on them, and would be able to compare and contrast both with Modula, Ada, and even Oberon (languages that I either remember you discussing, or come from an era/industry that you often cite techniques from).
I really, really hate to have doubt about you here, but I am starting to believe that we’ve all been had (don’t get me wrong, we’ve all learned things from your contributions!). As far as I’ve seen, you’ve been incredibly vague with your background (and privacy is your right!). But, that also makes it all the more easy to believe that there is something fishy with your story…
I’m not hiding much past what’s private or activates distracting biases. I’ve been clear when asked on Schneier’s blog, HN, maybe here that I don’t work in the security industry: I’m an independent researcher who did occasional gigs if people wanted me to. I mostly engineered prototypes to test my ideas. Did plenty of programming and hacking when younger for the common reasons and pleasures of it. I stayed in jobs that let me interact with lots of people. Goal was social research and outreach on big problems of the time like a police state forming post-9/11 which I used to write about online under aliases even more than tech. I suspected tech couldn’t solve the problems created by laws and media. Had to understand how many people thought, testing different messages. Plus, jobs allowing lots of networking mean you meet business folks, fun folks, you name it. A few other motivations, too.
Simultaneously, I was amassing as much knowledge as I could about security, programming, and such trying to solve the hardest problems in those fields. I gave up hacking since its methods were mostly repetitive and boring compared to designing methods to make hacking “impossible.” Originally a mix of public benefit and ego, I’d try to build on work by folks like Paul Karger to beat the worlds’ brightest people at their game one root cause at a time until a toolbox of methods and proven designs would solve the whole problem. I have a natural, savant-like talent for absorbing and integrating tons of information but a weakness for focusing on doing one thing over time to mature implementation. One is exciting, one is draining after a while. So, I just shared what I learned with builders as I figured it out with lots of meta-research. My studies of work of master researchers and engineers aimed to solve both individual solutions in security/programming (eg secure kernels or high-productivity) on top of looking for ways to integrate them like a unified, field theory of sorts. Wise friends kept telling me to just build one or more of these to completion (“focus Nick!”). Probably right but I’d have never learned all I have if I did. What you see me post is what I learned during all the time I wasn’t doing security consulting, building FOSS, or something else people pushed.
Unfortunately, right before I started to go for production stuff beyond prototypes, I took a brain injury in an accident years back that cost me most of my memory, muscle memory, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, etc. Gave me severe PTSD, too. I can’t remember most of my life. It was my second, great tragedy after a triple HD failure in a month or two that cost me my data. All I have past my online writings are mental fragments of what I learned and did. Sometimes I don’t know where they came from. One of the local hackers said I was the Jason Bourne of INFOSEC: didn’t know shit about my identity or methods but what’s left in there just fires in some contexts for some ass-kicking stuff. I also randomly retain new stuff that builds on it. Long as it’s tied to strong memories, I’ll remember it for some period of time. The stuff I write-up helps, too, which mostly went on Schneier’s blog and other spaces since some talented engineers from high-security were there delivering great peer review. Made a habit out of what worked. I put some on HN and Lobsters (including authored by’s). They’re just text files on my computer right now that are copies of what I told people or posted. I send them to people on request.
Now, a lot of people just get depressed, stop participating in life as a whole, and/or occasionally kill themselves. I had a house to keep in a shitty job that went from a research curiosity to a necessity since I didn’t remember admining, coding, etc. I tried to learn C# in a few weeks for a job once like I could’ve before. Just gave me massive headaches. It was clear I’d have to learn a piece at a time like I guess is normal for most folks. I wasn’t ready to accept it plus had a job to re-learn already. So, I had to re-learn the skills of my existing job (thank goodness for docs!), some people stuff, and so on to survive while others were trying to take my job. Fearing discrimination for disability, I didn’t even tell my coworkers about the accident. I just let them assume I was mentally off due to stress many of us were feeling as Recession led to layoffs in and around our households. I still don’t tell people until after I’m clearly a high-performer in the new context. Pointless since there’s no cure they could give but plenty of downsides to sharing it.
I transitioned out of that to other situations. Kind of floated around keeping the steady job for its research value. Drank a lot since I can’t choose what memories I keep and what I have goes away fast. A lot of motivation to learn stuff if I can’t keep it, eh? What you see are stuff I repeated the most for years on end teaching people fundamentals of INFOSEC and stuff. It sticks mostly. Now, I could’ve just piece by piece relearned some tech in a focused area, got a job in that, built up gradually, transitioned positions, etc… basically what non-savants do is what I’d have to do. Friends kept encouraging that. Still had things to learn talking to people especially where politics were going in lots of places. Still had R&D to do on trying to find the right set of assurance techniques for right components that could let people crank out high-security solutions quickly and market competitive. All the damage in media indicated that. Snowden leaks confirmed most of my ideas would’ve worked while most of security community’s recommendations not addressing root causes were being regularly compromised as those taught me predicted. So, I stayed on that out of perceived necessity that not enough people were doing it.
The old job and situation are more a burden now than useful. Sticking with it to do the research cost me a ton. I don’t think there’s much more to learn there. So, I plan to move on. One, social project failed in unexpected way late last year that was pretty depressing in its implications. I might take it up again since a lot of people might benefit. I’m also considering how I might pivot into a research position where I have time and energy to turn prior work into something useful. That might be Brute-Force Assurance, a secure (thing here), a better version of something like LISP/Smalltalk addressing reasons for low uptake, and so on. Each project idea has totally different prerequisites that would strain my damaged brain to learn or relearn. Given prior work and where tech is at, I’m leaning most toward a combo of BFA with a C variant done more like live coding, maybe embedded in something like Racket. One could rapidly iterate on code that extracted to C with about every method and tool available thrown at it for safety/security checks.
So, it’s a mix of indecision and my work/life leaving me feeling exhausted all the time. Writing up stuff on HN, Lobsters, etc about what’s still clear in my memory is easy and rejuvenating in comparison. I also see people use it on occasion with some set to maybe make waves. People also send me emails or private messages in gratitude. So, probably not doing what I need to be doing but folks were benefiting from me sharing pieces of my research results. So, there it is all laid out for you. A person outside security industry going Ramanujan on INFOSEC and programming looking for its UFT of getting shit done fast, correct, and secure (“have it all!”) while having day job(s) about meeting, understanding, and influencing people for protecting or improving democracy. Plus, just the life experiences of all that. It was fun while it lasted. Occasionally so now but more rare.
Sure. Im strange and seemingly contradictory enough that I expect confusion or skepticism. It makes sense for people to wonder. Im glad you asked since I needed to do a thorough writeup on it to link to vs scattered comments on many sites.
I have to admit similar misgivings (unsurprisingly, I came here via @apg and know @apg IRL). For someone so prolific and opinionated you have very little presence beyond commenting on the internet. To me, that feels suspicious, but who knows. I’m actually kind of hoping you’re some epic AI model and we’re the test subjects.
have you considered “I do not choose to compete” instead of “If only I hadn’t had that memory loss”?
I did say the way my mind works makes it really hard to focus on long-term projects to completion. Also, I probably should’ve been doing some official submissions in ACM/IEEE but polishing and conferencing was a lot of work distracting from the fun/important research. If I’m reading you right, it’s accurate to say I wasn’t trying to compete in academia, market, or social club that is the security industry on top of memory loss. I was operating at a severe handicap. So, I’d (a) do those tedious, boring, distracting, sometimes-political things with that handicap or (b) keep doing what I was doing, enjoying, and provably good at despite my troubles. I kept going with (b).
That was the decision until recently when I started looking at doing some real, public projects. Still in the planning/indecision phase on that.
“But, lies have a way of growing, and there is some line down the road where forgive-and-forget becomes GTFO.”
I did most of my bullshitting when I was a young hacker trying to get started. Quite opposite of your claim, the snobby, elitist, ego-centered groups I had to start with told you to GTFO by default unless you said what they said, did what they expected, and so on. I found hacker culture to be full of bullshit beliefs and practices with no evidence backing them. That’s true to this day. Just getting in to few opportunities I had required me to talk big… being a loud wolf facing other wolves… plus deliver on a lot of it just to not be filtered. I’d have likely never entered INFOSEC or verification otherwise. Other times have been personal failures that required humiliating retractions and apologies when I got busted. I actually care about avoiding unnecessary harm or aggravation to decent people. I’m sure more failures will come out over time with them costing me but there will be a clear difference between old and newer me. Since I recognize my failure there, I’m focusing on security BSing for rest of comment since it’s most relevant here.
The now, especially over past five years or so, has been me sharing hard-won knowledge with people with citations. Most of the BS is stuff security professionals say without evidence that I counter with evidence. Many of their recommendations got trashed by hackers with quite a few of mine working or working better. Especially on memory safety, small TCB’s, covert channels, and obfuscation. I got much early karma on HN in particular mainly countering BS in fads, topics/people w/ special treatment, echo chambers, and so on. My stuff stayed greyed out but I had references. They usually got upvoted back by the evening. To this day, I get emails thanking me for doing what they said they couldn’t since any dissenting opinion on specific topics or individuals would get slammed. My mostly-civil, evidence-based style survived. Some BS actually declined a bit since we countered it so often. Just recently had to counter a staged comparison here which is at 12 votes worth of gratitude, high for HN dissenters. The people I counter include high-profile folks in security industry who are totally full of shit on certain topics. Some won’t relent no matter who concrete the evidence is since it’s a game or something to them. Although I get ego out of being right, I mainly do this since I think safe, secure systems are a necessary, public good. I want to know what really works, get that out there, and see it widely deployed.
If anything, I think my being a bullshitting hacker/programmer early on was a mix of justified and maybe overdoing it vs a flaw I should’ve avoided. I was facing locals and an industry that’s more like a fraternity than meritocracy, itself constantly reinforcing bullshit and GTFO’ing dissenters. With my learning abilities and obsession, I got real knowledge and skills pretty quickly switching to current style of just teaching what I learned in a variety of fields with tons of brainstorming and private research. Irritated by constant BS, I’ve swung way in the other direction by constantly countering BS in IT/INFOSEC/politics while being much more open about personal situation in ways that can cost me. I also turned down quite a few jobs offers for likely five to six digits telling them I was a researcher “outside of industry” who had “forgotten or atrophied many hands-on skills.” I straight-up tell them I’d be afraid to fuck up their systems by forgetting little, important details that only experience (and working memory) gives you. Mainly admining or networking stuff for that. I could probably re-learn safe/secure C coding or something enough to not screw up commercial projects if I stayed focused on it. Esp FOSS practice.
So, what you think? I had justification for at least some of my early bullshit quite like playing the part for job interviews w/ HR drones? Or should’ve been honest enough that I never learned or showed up here? There might be middle ground but that cost seems likely given past circumstances. I think my early deceptions or occasional fuckups are outweighed by the knowledge/wisdom I obtained and shared. It definitely helped quite a few people whereas talking big to gain entry did no damage that I can tell. I wasn’t giving bad advice or anything: just a mix of storytelling with letting their own perceptions seem true. Almost all of them are way in my past. So, really curious what you think of how justified someone entering a group of bullshitters with arbitrary, filtering criteria is justified in out-bullshiting and out-performing them to gain useful knowledge and skills? That part specifically.
As a self-piloted, ambulatory tower of nano machines inhabiting the surface of a wet rock hurtling through outer space, I have zero time for BS in any context. Sorry.
I do have time for former BSers who quit doing it because they realized that none of these other mechanical wonders around them are actually any better or worse at being what they are. We’re all on this rock together.
p.s. the inside of the rock is molten. w t actual f? :D
Actually, come to think of it, I will sit around and B.S. for hours, in person with close friends, for fun. Basically just playing language games that have no rules. It probably helps that all the players love each other. That kind of BS is fine.
I somehow missed this comment before or was dealing with too much stuff to respond. You and I may have some of that in common since I do it for fun. I don’t count that as BS people want to avoid so much as just entertainment since I always end with a signal its bullshit. People know it’s fake unless tricking them is part of our game, esp if I owe them a “Damnit!” or two. Even then, it’s still something we’re doing voluntarily for fun.
My day-to-day style is a satirist like popular artists doing controversial comedy or references. I just string ideas together to make people laugh, wonder, or shock them. Same skill that lets me mix and match tech ideas. If shocking stuff bothers them, tone it way down so they’re as comfortable as they let others be. Otherwise, I’m testing their boundaries with stuff making them react somewhere between hysterical laughter and “Wow. Damn…” People tell me I should Twitter the stuff or something. Prolly right again but haven’t done it. Friends and coworkers were plenty fun to entertain without any extra burdens.
One thing about sites like this is staying civil and informational actually makes me hide that part of my style a lot since it might piss a lot of people off or risk deleting my account. I mostly can’t even joke here since it just doesn’t come across right. People interpret via impression those informational or political posts gave vs my in-person, satirical style that heavily leans on non-tech references, verbal delivery, and/or body language. Small numbers of people face-to-face instead of a random crowd, too, most of the time. I seem to fit into that medium better. And trying to be low-noise and low-provocation on this site in particular since I think it has more value that way.
Just figured I’d mention that since we were talking about this stuff. I work in a pretty toxic environment. In it, I’m probably the champion of burning jerks with improv and comebacks. Even most naysayers pay attention with their eyes and some smirks saying they look forward to next quip. I’m a mix of informative, critical, random entertainment, and careful boundary pushing just to learn about people. There’s more to it than that. Accurate enough for our purposes I think.
Lmao. Alright. We should get along fine then given I use this site for brainstorming, informing, and countering as I described. :)
And yeah it trips me out that life is sitting on a molten, gushing thing being supplied energy by piles of hydrogen bombs going off in a space set to maybe expand into our atmosphere at some point. That is if a stray star doesn’t send us whirling out of orbit. Standing in the way of all of this is the ingenuity of what appear to be ants on a space rock whose combined brainpower got a few off of it and then back on a few times. They have plans for their pet rock. Meanwhile, they scurry around on it making all kinds of different visual, IR, and RF patterns for space tourists to watch for a space buck a show.
Team lobste.rs, @lattera, @nickpsecurity?
Haha. I would love it if I had the time to play. Perhaps next year. Thanks for the ping, though. I’ve forwarded this on to a few of my coworkers who play CTFs.
I’d love to if I hadn’t lost my memory, including of hacking, to that injury. I never relearned it since I was all-in with high-assurance security at that point which made stuff immune to almost everything hackers did. If I still remembered, I’d have totally been down for a Lobsters hacking crew. I’d bring a dozen types of covert channels with me, too. One of my favorite ways to leak small things was putting it in plain text into TCP/IP headers and/or throttling of what otherwise is boring traffic vetted by NIDS and human eye. Or maybe in HTTPS traffic where they said, “Damn, if only I could see inside it to assess it” while the data was outside encoded but unencrypted. Just loved doing the sneakiest stuff with the most esoteric methods I could find with much dark irony.
I will be relearning coding and probably C at some point in future to implement some important ideas. I planned on pinging you to assess the methods and tooling if I build them. From there, might use it in some kind of secure coding or code smashing challenge.
I’m having a hard time unpacking this post, and am really starting to get suspicious of who you are, nickpsecurity. Maybe I’ve missed some background posts of yours that explains more, and provides better context, but this comment (like many others) comes off…almost Markovian (as in chain).
“If I hadn’t lost my memory…” — of all the people on Lobsters, you seem to have the best recall. You regularly cite papers on a wide range of formal methods topics, old operating systems, security, and even in this post discuss techniques for “hacking” which, just sentences before “you can’t remember how to do.”
You regularly write essays as comments…some of which are almost tangential to the main point being made. These essays are cranked out at a somewhat alarming pace. But I’ve never seen an “authored by” submitted by you pointing outside of Lobsters.
You then claim that you need to relearn coding, and “probably C” to implement important ideas. I’ve seen comments recently where you ask about Go and Rust, but would expect, given the number of submissions on those topics specifically, you’d have wide ranging opinions on them, and would be able to compare and contrast both with Modula, Ada, and even Oberon (languages that I either remember you discussing, or come from an era/industry that you often cite techniques from).
I really, really hate to have doubt about you here, but I am starting to believe that we’ve all been had (don’t get me wrong, we’ve all learned things from your contributions!). As far as I’ve seen, you’ve been incredibly vague with your background (and privacy is your right!). But, that also makes it all the more easy to believe that there is something fishy with your story…
I’m not hiding much past what’s private or activates distracting biases. I’ve been clear when asked on Schneier’s blog, HN, maybe here that I don’t work in the security industry: I’m an independent researcher who did occasional gigs if people wanted me to. I mostly engineered prototypes to test my ideas. Did plenty of programming and hacking when younger for the common reasons and pleasures of it. I stayed in jobs that let me interact with lots of people. Goal was social research and outreach on big problems of the time like a police state forming post-9/11 which I used to write about online under aliases even more than tech. I suspected tech couldn’t solve the problems created by laws and media. Had to understand how many people thought, testing different messages. Plus, jobs allowing lots of networking mean you meet business folks, fun folks, you name it. A few other motivations, too.
Simultaneously, I was amassing as much knowledge as I could about security, programming, and such trying to solve the hardest problems in those fields. I gave up hacking since its methods were mostly repetitive and boring compared to designing methods to make hacking “impossible.” Originally a mix of public benefit and ego, I’d try to build on work by folks like Paul Karger to beat the worlds’ brightest people at their game one root cause at a time until a toolbox of methods and proven designs would solve the whole problem. I have a natural, savant-like talent for absorbing and integrating tons of information but a weakness for focusing on doing one thing over time to mature implementation. One is exciting, one is draining after a while. So, I just shared what I learned with builders as I figured it out with lots of meta-research. My studies of work of master researchers and engineers aimed to solve both individual solutions in security/programming (eg secure kernels or high-productivity) on top of looking for ways to integrate them like a unified, field theory of sorts. Wise friends kept telling me to just build one or more of these to completion (“focus Nick!”). Probably right but I’d have never learned all I have if I did. What you see me post is what I learned during all the time I wasn’t doing security consulting, building FOSS, or something else people pushed.
Unfortunately, right before I started to go for production stuff beyond prototypes, I took a brain injury in an accident years back that cost me most of my memory, muscle memory, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, etc. Gave me severe PTSD, too. I can’t remember most of my life. It was my second, great tragedy after a triple HD failure in a month or two that cost me my data. All I have past my online writings are mental fragments of what I learned and did. Sometimes I don’t know where they came from. One of the local hackers said I was the Jason Bourne of INFOSEC: didn’t know shit about my identity or methods but what’s left in there just fires in some contexts for some ass-kicking stuff. I also randomly retain new stuff that builds on it. Long as it’s tied to strong memories, I’ll remember it for some period of time. The stuff I write-up helps, too, which mostly went on Schneier’s blog and other spaces since some talented engineers from high-security were there delivering great peer review. Made a habit out of what worked. I put some on HN and Lobsters (including authored by’s). They’re just text files on my computer right now that are copies of what I told people or posted. I send them to people on request.
Now, a lot of people just get depressed, stop participating in life as a whole, and/or occasionally kill themselves. I had a house to keep in a shitty job that went from a research curiosity to a necessity since I didn’t remember admining, coding, etc. I tried to learn C# in a few weeks for a job once like I could’ve before. Just gave me massive headaches. It was clear I’d have to learn a piece at a time like I guess is normal for most folks. I wasn’t ready to accept it plus had a job to re-learn already. So, I had to re-learn the skills of my existing job (thank goodness for docs!), some people stuff, and so on to survive while others were trying to take my job. Fearing discrimination for disability, I didn’t even tell my coworkers about the accident. I just let them assume I was mentally off due to stress many of us were feeling as Recession led to layoffs in and around our households. I still don’t tell people until after I’m clearly a high-performer in the new context. Pointless since there’s no cure they could give but plenty of downsides to sharing it.
I transitioned out of that to other situations. Kind of floated around keeping the steady job for its research value. Drank a lot since I can’t choose what memories I keep and what I have goes away fast. A lot of motivation to learn stuff if I can’t keep it, eh? What you see are stuff I repeated the most for years on end teaching people fundamentals of INFOSEC and stuff. It sticks mostly. Now, I could’ve just piece by piece relearned some tech in a focused area, got a job in that, built up gradually, transitioned positions, etc… basically what non-savants do is what I’d have to do. Friends kept encouraging that. Still had things to learn talking to people especially where politics were going in lots of places. Still had R&D to do on trying to find the right set of assurance techniques for right components that could let people crank out high-security solutions quickly and market competitive. All the damage in media indicated that. Snowden leaks confirmed most of my ideas would’ve worked while most of security community’s recommendations not addressing root causes were being regularly compromised as those taught me predicted. So, I stayed on that out of perceived necessity that not enough people were doing it.
The old job and situation are more a burden now than useful. Sticking with it to do the research cost me a ton. I don’t think there’s much more to learn there. So, I plan to move on. One, social project failed in unexpected way late last year that was pretty depressing in its implications. I might take it up again since a lot of people might benefit. I’m also considering how I might pivot into a research position where I have time and energy to turn prior work into something useful. That might be Brute-Force Assurance, a secure (thing here), a better version of something like LISP/Smalltalk addressing reasons for low uptake, and so on. Each project idea has totally different prerequisites that would strain my damaged brain to learn or relearn. Given prior work and where tech is at, I’m leaning most toward a combo of BFA with a C variant done more like live coding, maybe embedded in something like Racket. One could rapidly iterate on code that extracted to C with about every method and tool available thrown at it for safety/security checks.
So, it’s a mix of indecision and my work/life leaving me feeling exhausted all the time. Writing up stuff on HN, Lobsters, etc about what’s still clear in my memory is easy and rejuvenating in comparison. I also see people use it on occasion with some set to maybe make waves. People also send me emails or private messages in gratitude. So, probably not doing what I need to be doing but folks were benefiting from me sharing pieces of my research results. So, there it is all laid out for you. A person outside security industry going Ramanujan on INFOSEC and programming looking for its UFT of getting shit done fast, correct, and secure (“have it all!”) while having day job(s) about meeting, understanding, and influencing people for protecting or improving democracy. Plus, just the life experiences of all that. It was fun while it lasted. Occasionally so now but more rare.
Thank you for sharing your story! It provides a lot of useful context for understanding your perspective in your comments.
—
Putting my troll hat on for a second, what you’ve written would also make a great cover story if you were a human/AI hybrid. Just saying. :)
Sure. Im strange and seemingly contradictory enough that I expect confusion or skepticism. It makes sense for people to wonder. Im glad you asked since I needed to do a thorough writeup on it to link to vs scattered comments on many sites.
I have to admit similar misgivings (unsurprisingly, I came here via @apg and know @apg IRL). For someone so prolific and opinionated you have very little presence beyond commenting on the internet. To me, that feels suspicious, but who knows. I’m actually kind of hoping you’re some epic AI model and we’re the test subjects.
Occam’s Razor applies. ‘A very bright human bullshitter’ is more likely than somebody’s research project.
@nickpsecurity, have you considered “I do not choose to compete” instead of “If only I hadn’t had that memory loss”?
I, for one, will forgive and forget what I’ve seen so far. (TBH, I’m hardly paying attention anyway.)
But, lies have a way of growing, and there is some line down the road where forgive-and-forget becomes GTFO.
I did say the way my mind works makes it really hard to focus on long-term projects to completion. Also, I probably should’ve been doing some official submissions in ACM/IEEE but polishing and conferencing was a lot of work distracting from the fun/important research. If I’m reading you right, it’s accurate to say I wasn’t trying to compete in academia, market, or social club that is the security industry on top of memory loss. I was operating at a severe handicap. So, I’d (a) do those tedious, boring, distracting, sometimes-political things with that handicap or (b) keep doing what I was doing, enjoying, and provably good at despite my troubles. I kept going with (b).
That was the decision until recently when I started looking at doing some real, public projects. Still in the planning/indecision phase on that.
“But, lies have a way of growing, and there is some line down the road where forgive-and-forget becomes GTFO.”
I did most of my bullshitting when I was a young hacker trying to get started. Quite opposite of your claim, the snobby, elitist, ego-centered groups I had to start with told you to GTFO by default unless you said what they said, did what they expected, and so on. I found hacker culture to be full of bullshit beliefs and practices with no evidence backing them. That’s true to this day. Just getting in to few opportunities I had required me to talk big… being a loud wolf facing other wolves… plus deliver on a lot of it just to not be filtered. I’d have likely never entered INFOSEC or verification otherwise. Other times have been personal failures that required humiliating retractions and apologies when I got busted. I actually care about avoiding unnecessary harm or aggravation to decent people. I’m sure more failures will come out over time with them costing me but there will be a clear difference between old and newer me. Since I recognize my failure there, I’m focusing on security BSing for rest of comment since it’s most relevant here.
The now, especially over past five years or so, has been me sharing hard-won knowledge with people with citations. Most of the BS is stuff security professionals say without evidence that I counter with evidence. Many of their recommendations got trashed by hackers with quite a few of mine working or working better. Especially on memory safety, small TCB’s, covert channels, and obfuscation. I got much early karma on HN in particular mainly countering BS in fads, topics/people w/ special treatment, echo chambers, and so on. My stuff stayed greyed out but I had references. They usually got upvoted back by the evening. To this day, I get emails thanking me for doing what they said they couldn’t since any dissenting opinion on specific topics or individuals would get slammed. My mostly-civil, evidence-based style survived. Some BS actually declined a bit since we countered it so often. Just recently had to counter a staged comparison here which is at 12 votes worth of gratitude, high for HN dissenters. The people I counter include high-profile folks in security industry who are totally full of shit on certain topics. Some won’t relent no matter who concrete the evidence is since it’s a game or something to them. Although I get ego out of being right, I mainly do this since I think safe, secure systems are a necessary, public good. I want to know what really works, get that out there, and see it widely deployed.
If anything, I think my being a bullshitting hacker/programmer early on was a mix of justified and maybe overdoing it vs a flaw I should’ve avoided. I was facing locals and an industry that’s more like a fraternity than meritocracy, itself constantly reinforcing bullshit and GTFO’ing dissenters. With my learning abilities and obsession, I got real knowledge and skills pretty quickly switching to current style of just teaching what I learned in a variety of fields with tons of brainstorming and private research. Irritated by constant BS, I’ve swung way in the other direction by constantly countering BS in IT/INFOSEC/politics while being much more open about personal situation in ways that can cost me. I also turned down quite a few jobs offers for likely five to six digits telling them I was a researcher “outside of industry” who had “forgotten or atrophied many hands-on skills.” I straight-up tell them I’d be afraid to fuck up their systems by forgetting little, important details that only experience (and working memory) gives you. Mainly admining or networking stuff for that. I could probably re-learn safe/secure C coding or something enough to not screw up commercial projects if I stayed focused on it. Esp FOSS practice.
So, what you think? I had justification for at least some of my early bullshit quite like playing the part for job interviews w/ HR drones? Or should’ve been honest enough that I never learned or showed up here? There might be middle ground but that cost seems likely given past circumstances. I think my early deceptions or occasional fuckups are outweighed by the knowledge/wisdom I obtained and shared. It definitely helped quite a few people whereas talking big to gain entry did no damage that I can tell. I wasn’t giving bad advice or anything: just a mix of storytelling with letting their own perceptions seem true. Almost all of them are way in my past. So, really curious what you think of how justified someone entering a group of bullshitters with arbitrary, filtering criteria is justified in out-bullshiting and out-performing them to gain useful knowledge and skills? That part specifically.
As a self-piloted, ambulatory tower of nano machines inhabiting the surface of a wet rock hurtling through outer space, I have zero time for BS in any context. Sorry.
I do have time for former BSers who quit doing it because they realized that none of these other mechanical wonders around them are actually any better or worse at being what they are. We’re all on this rock together.
p.s. the inside of the rock is molten. w t actual f? :D
Actually, come to think of it, I will sit around and B.S. for hours, in person with close friends, for fun. Basically just playing language games that have no rules. It probably helps that all the players love each other. That kind of BS is fine.
I somehow missed this comment before or was dealing with too much stuff to respond. You and I may have some of that in common since I do it for fun. I don’t count that as BS people want to avoid so much as just entertainment since I always end with a signal its bullshit. People know it’s fake unless tricking them is part of our game, esp if I owe them a “Damnit!” or two. Even then, it’s still something we’re doing voluntarily for fun.
My day-to-day style is a satirist like popular artists doing controversial comedy or references. I just string ideas together to make people laugh, wonder, or shock them. Same skill that lets me mix and match tech ideas. If shocking stuff bothers them, tone it way down so they’re as comfortable as they let others be. Otherwise, I’m testing their boundaries with stuff making them react somewhere between hysterical laughter and “Wow. Damn…” People tell me I should Twitter the stuff or something. Prolly right again but haven’t done it. Friends and coworkers were plenty fun to entertain without any extra burdens.
One thing about sites like this is staying civil and informational actually makes me hide that part of my style a lot since it might piss a lot of people off or risk deleting my account. I mostly can’t even joke here since it just doesn’t come across right. People interpret via impression those informational or political posts gave vs my in-person, satirical style that heavily leans on non-tech references, verbal delivery, and/or body language. Small numbers of people face-to-face instead of a random crowd, too, most of the time. I seem to fit into that medium better. And trying to be low-noise and low-provocation on this site in particular since I think it has more value that way.
Just figured I’d mention that since we were talking about this stuff. I work in a pretty toxic environment. In it, I’m probably the champion of burning jerks with improv and comebacks. Even most naysayers pay attention with their eyes and some smirks saying they look forward to next quip. I’m a mix of informative, critical, random entertainment, and careful boundary pushing just to learn about people. There’s more to it than that. Accurate enough for our purposes I think.
Lmao. Alright. We should get along fine then given I use this site for brainstorming, informing, and countering as I described. :)
And yeah it trips me out that life is sitting on a molten, gushing thing being supplied energy by piles of hydrogen bombs going off in a space set to maybe expand into our atmosphere at some point. That is if a stray star doesn’t send us whirling out of orbit. Standing in the way of all of this is the ingenuity of what appear to be ants on a space rock whose combined brainpower got a few off of it and then back on a few times. They have plans for their pet rock. Meanwhile, they scurry around on it making all kinds of different visual, IR, and RF patterns for space tourists to watch for a space buck a show.
A good use for the
eventtag!