alt. title: I whine about an era of history that I didn’t experience cos’ I wasn’t born in the right time.

Introduction

I’m going to rant and rave about something that’s been on my chest. It might not be the most coherent thing I wrote, but if any good ideas came out of this, it’s purely by accident. Like a lot of kids my age, I was fascinated with computers. Unlike most kids, I was obsessed with it. I wanted to figure out how to get it to work. I came up with weird theories (speculations, not scientific ones) about how software worked; theories like how Microsoft’s developers used notepad to “write EXE files.” I really thought that microsoft’s developers wrote the raw ASCII symbols into notepad to create software—and even entire operating systems XD. My first programs were made with a CASE tool that I can’t remember. I think I learned to “program” somewhere between age 12-13, although it was in VBScript and batch files. I’m not sure if those count as languages (I suppose what counts as a programming language depends on who you ask :P)

I attended a fairly authoritarian junior high school (c. 2007-2010) where I did something of poor judgement. That poor judgement thing involved computers, skiddie hacking and the internet. The headmaster yelled at me b/c of my interest in hacking, which only convinced me that a) school (public, private or charter) is a fucking fascist shithole and b) if the fascists don’t like hacking, it must be a good thing (I do, however, acknowledge that the specific poor judgement thing I did was indeed a mistake). Later, I failed classes at that school and the overpaid blowhards “educators” over there attributed it to my “obsession” with computers (it was actually me taking a stand against the unpaid slave labour that is called schoolwork, but whateves. I suppose it’s easier to blame the victim as opposed to try to fix the system :P)

Eventually I graduated from authoritarian junior high, but it wasn’t over yet…

High school

I went to a IT-focused high school (c. 2010-2013) and it was probably better than junior high, but I still had problems. I started commiting serial truancy to the point that I missed almost 100 days of school. Hell, I was so much of a truant that I read a novel called The Truancy by Isamu Fukui (ISBN-13: 978-0765317674), which was amazing in my case because I struggle to read fiction and normally tried to avoid it. I rammed heads with the administration and schoolteachers there, although I was more polite (with a tad bit of passive aggressiveness). While the normies were reading Ayn Rand, I was busy reading Ivan Illich and Abbie Hoffman.

At the same time, I began practicing hacking—within a mostly legal context. I played around with metasploit, I tried and failed to start a company just so I can get clearance to buy exploit kits like Core Impact and Immunity CANVAS. I learned to program in python, and made fairly simple tooling (nothing fancy, just automating the boring hacky stuff) that I never bothered to publish. I also got semi involved with group like Anonymous, both their politics and trolling. I hated (and still hate) Obama for being a lousy president. And I liked to troll both liberals and conservatives (here’s an example where Robbie Rotten = me; also note Billy’s childism)

Eventually my troubles with the administration got so bad that I decided to transfer to a special ed school because I feared that they would try to lock me up in prison (for the eevvilllleeee crime of missing the school bus).

Flirting with the social (pseudo)sciences

In special ed. high school, I became interested in quantitative biology and evolutionary algorithms (c. early 2014) and discovered eugenics. Because I had a rudimentary understanding of biology, I temporarly accepted the hereditarian hypothesis (but rejected eugenics and “race realism,” even I knew that race was purely abstract and arbitrary) which stated that a lot of human behaviour is explained by genetic factors. I became interested in statistics, and even “rediscovered” ideas in probability that Francis Galton “rediscovered” when doing his eugenics research. I also got interested in throughbred handicapping and tried and failed to work out a betting system that would make me moderately rich. Though who knows, it’s possible. After all, Bill Benter figured it out.

I almost switched my interest from hacking to the social “sciences,” but due to circumstances that I don’t want to get into, I quickly dropped my interest in the social (junk) sciences (in the middle of my college career), rejected the hereditarian hypothesis, temporarilly dropped out of college, and am trying to get back into hacking. Although, I do still have an interest in statistics and debunking bad social science research—which is basically 99.7% of their crap ;-)

Things started to get weird

I started my twitter account (c. 2016) initially to follow bronies and hacking news. I met a lot of fun people in the brony community, the hacker community, and even brony hackers! Around that time, the God Emperor Trump was running for president. I acted like a boring, useless liberal and just shat talked him on twitter, but there was something different about him. Trump was weird, he did a lot of silly and vulgar things. It’s fascism, but really weird fascism. It worked apparently cos’ the Donald got elected and is now sitting on the iron throne.

Today, I don’t know how to feel about lord Trump. On one hand his policies are terrible and his past life is questionable, but on the other hand I think he’s putting on a show to make people laugh. I respect people who are bold enough to make fun of themselves just to make others happy. Trump might be a despot, but he’s a really weird despot. At least Obama is easy to hate, he was a slick mountebank who sold “hope and change” to the electorate and acted like a typical normie politican to get ahead. With the Donald, I honestly don’t know how to feel. He seems like an honest liar (both in the oxymoronic sense and the James Randi interpretation)

“Why the fuck Robert Rants are you telling me your backstory?”

Mainly to give you some context. Anonymous started to die c. 2016 and hackers dabbling in sociology and philosophy tried to make sense of it.

There was an interesting article published in Phrack magazine called The Fall of Hacker Groups which suggested that hackers today are more interested in stroking their egos and acting selfishly to the point that even Yaron Brook would blush. We (myself included) like to think that we invented things on our own, but in reality it was the result of taking existing inventions and putting them together (often with very little modification to be called distinct). When we invent things, we tend to whore “sell” ourselves and what we made, either for fame or for dollars. Because of our egoism, hackers today can’t be as good as OGs like Cult of the Dead Cow and Masters of Deception.

I know that Daniel Miessler is an arrogant wankstain, but he does write decent stuff when discussing infosec topics. Miessler wrote an article called Technical Professions Progress from Magical to Boring (archive) in where he says that the tech profession is becoming as boring as the accounting profession. I agree. Miessler correctly states that “[t]here was probably a time when accounting was the most magical thing in the world,” and that’s true. Think about a subset of accounting called forensic accounting. How robert ranting and sexy would it be to be able to use 1337 af mathematical techniques to track down fraudsters? Of course it robert ranting is! But sadly, the formalization of both accounting and technology is taking away that robert ranting awesomeness and ultra sexyness.

From being underground to being accepted

A part of me misses being in K-12 schooling. I feel that I needed an authority figure to hate, whether it’s the cocksure, no-skin-in-the-game schoolteacher or a salesperson from fake namek. Hacking started as an anti-establishment movement where hackers invented because it was fun. Fun to invent and fun to stick it to the man. Things like race, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, education attainment, status, socio-economic status, emininence, etc. didn’t matter. What mattered was that you contributed to making the world a robert ranting place.

Eric Raymond wrote in the “How to Become A Hacker” (Revision 1.52) entry that hackers should attach their irl names to their work. Well, I’m here to tell you that that advice is not robert ranting, not at all. We should instead follow what Jesus said:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matthew 6:5-6)

Jesus—who unlike Raymond is a true robert ranter— was tawking about praying, but the same concept applies to other aspects in life too. Don’t brag about your accomplishments; don’t virtue signal. If anything, brag about your failures. I feel like a dick because I’m going by my irl name when publishing my “professional” work, whether it’s my quasi-academic papers or my resume. Honestly, I’d rather go by a handle. Something robert ranting like Zero Cool, Crash Override or Acid Burn (5 reddit points if u can work out the reference ;-)

Capitalism is here, fucking everything up

Thanks to the douchebags over at the Cato Institute, people are now turning what is supposed to be an anti-establishment philosophy into a money making operation. No more is hacking a tool and way of thinking that can be used to make the world a robert ranting place, but now it is a standardized methodology that “professionals” make use of to “secure” networks. As Miessler correctly pointed out, hacking and technology has become institutionalized.

I won’t name any names, but just take a look at all dem infosec companies today. While there are some outright charlatans, the genuinely skilled practitioners are acting like complete and total twats. Trademarking products that only consist of a few words (and sometime single words)? Really? Taking The Mentor’s Hacker Manifesto and making it into a tee shirt. Really? That’s just as stupid and ironic as Che Guevara tee shirts.

That time I wanted to be an assistant manager at Applebees

When I was in high school (the technical one, not the special ed. one) I wanted to be an assistant manager at Applebees (or McDonalds, whichever came first). The reason was that I knew intitutively (and from reading Alfie Kohn articles) that being rich would turn me into an a$$hole, and that whoring my (mediocre) ability computers would lessen my passion for it. Rich people (or those who aim to be rich) care about themselves more, rather that striving to make the world a robert ranting place, they work to make themselves rich and loose their ability to emphatize with the plebs and unwashed masses.

I’m not saying that people who are starting infosec companies are inherietly bad people. Hell, even the outright charlatans can be forgiven. After all, don’t hate the player, hate the game. I’m just saying that when you turn something into a business, it becomes faek and unauthentic (you know, like CNN ;-) Sadly, we live in a capitalist society, and therefore need to whore ourselves to some extent. With the growing inequality that is inherient to any capitalist system, I’m forced to take higher education so I can be a part of the elite, superior race 20% upper class and not be super poor.

Conclusion

A guy called EmpLemon made a video discussing how YouTube is dying because of greed and lack of motivation to make cool shit:





Sadly, the hacker community is dying for the same reasons. And so ends my rant that might of made sense, but not really. Remember kids, don’t 4get to #HackThePlanet and work hard to make the world a more robert ranting place.