Agreed. Although I don't personally consume anything but beer and the occasional scotch, I've always viewed drugs, and psychedelics in particular, as mechanisms used to hack the most interesting computer...our brain.

I'm not judging, it just doesn't fit IMHO. A hacker using cocaine and psychedelics? That seems like an Olympic runner smoking cigars, if you follow my meaning.

Not a computer hacker, but applicable I think: Paul Erdös. http://www.amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

I don't see how this is related. I know people who are lot smarter than me and I would call "hackers" who regularly consume cocaine. It's a (quite dangerous) lifestyle decision with disastrous long-term effects but very little, if any short-term effects on their intelligence or creativity.

This article doesn't really tell us anything. He could be drinking coca tea once every few months, or he could be smoking crack every day. Or he might just be a collector who doesn't even use the drugs. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions.

It's not as if it takes a Ph.D in Mathematics to append randomly generated numbers to an HTTP GET.

It's just body hacking.

The drugs/sex/rock+roll spectacle always draws attention, without fail. If the man in this story instead consumed alcohol (a narcotic of similar potency) in a conspicuous fashion, the spectacle would be less.

Maybe it has to do with the drugs being a felony?

I think he was being sarcastic.

Politics. The drug war ensures that USA money will enslave Mexico and several countries in South America.

Otherwise superior natural resources could make those countries grow too strong for USA to be happy about it. They can even become socialist countries.