I agree with the GP that this kind of thing should be celebrated on HN and we should encourage the next generation to continue hacking.
While people did debate the ethics of it, the hacking was admired because it was someone not in a position of power hacking an entity that was. It also illuminated a massive security risk which could now be fixed.
Something that drastically limits and can be used to oppress people like a nation-wide travel restriction should be public and require due cause. Not a mystical list where one day you realize "wow guess my life is fucked"
Now, Woz was obviously an amazing hacker back in the day and has a reputation of being a good person. So one would imagine there are stories that show him being really clever that are, you know, actually clever rather than just showing off an information asymmetry about trivia (re: these sheets of $2 bills). Where the punchline is something wholesome, rather than him humiliating strangers who have done literally nothing wrong.
Seems to be an opportunity if good faith predicts that they won't do him any serious wrong.
> But I had got a big point on him and I was quite satisfied in that
Like, I can sort of understand the humor value of giving away $2 bills as a tip since they're rare and some people don't know about it. But there is literally no value in baiting people as to whether this is legit money or counterfeit, except for Woz to feel superior to them. And it's not an isolated occurence! He clearly does this all the time, so often that he has multiple variants of the script.
This is not a story to celebrate. It is not challenging the status quo, it is not rebelling against authority, it is not a smart hack, or whatever y'all are describing it as. It is an ugly story of a man with a lot of wealth punching down, playing games using the little people as a prop purely for his own amusement, repeatedly, and then bragging about it.
The nasty act here, and possibly criminal, was the security guy calling the Secret Service and reporting on someone he knew wasn't actually guilty of anything.
> It is an ugly story ...
Of tedious security people inflating themselves by bothering normal people.
> it's not an isolated occurence! He clearly does this all the time
Thankfully, if these people go unchallenged then when they go off it's on a random unsuspecting person. He's prepared and can take it in stride.
The mistake was to engage with the SS agent without his lawyer. He pretty clearly wouldn't have been arrested but because he essentially volunteered for this fishing expedition they'll perform it.
Yes, trying to hurt somebody's ego would indeed be a pretty good example of humiliating them.
Look, if you think that the bound booklet of $2 bills is a fun gag, there's a humane and lighthearted way to do it. You use the bills as described, but if somebody seems even a bit uncomfortable with them you volunteer an explanation for what's going on. That way they actually have a cool story to tell. And the joke's on you, not them.
But that is not what Woz did. He intentionally made himself as suspicious as possible, in multiple ways, just to try to force people to investigate. It was all about showing his superiority over this sad loser working a 10-hour shift in a suit, who thought he knew a thing or two about counterfeit money. Well, he wasn't all that, and Woz sure showed him who the smartest guy in the room was.
> Thankfully, if these people go unchallenged then when they go off it's on a random unsuspecting person. He's prepared and can take it in stride.
No unsuspecting person would have this interaction in the first place. They would not have gone through the trouble of arranging for legit money to look counterfeit. That is not what normal people do. They would not have a script to follow to string people along, and carefully consider just what the optimal level of dodgy behavior would be. They would not waste others' time for their own amusement. Because that's not what people with even a pinch of empathy would do.
Put yourself into some work situation. I don't know, maybe you're a engineer given this is HN. And you get this bug report from a customer. It's really well written, has a screenshot showing the issue, and includes reproduction steps. You try to reproduce it, and can't. So you ask some questions from a customer, iterate a few times, add some logging statements and ask them to reproduce the problem. etc. And then finally the customer smugly says that there never was a bug. They photoshopped the screenshot, and made everything up. If you'd actually known how this program works, you'd have known that this bug could never exist. It's a hilarious gag, what a prankster! And you were paid for this work, no harm done, right?
No. Fuck that. I would be furious at having my time wasted like that. And this is what Woz did. Not just once, but probably dozens of times. That's just outright sociopathic behavior, and I cannot believe how many people here are defending it just because he is a member of your tribe.
If someone's ego is tweaked when they find they're wrong then perhaps that's a helpful thing to do.
> Look, if you think that the bound booklet of $2 bills is a fun gag, there's a humane and lighthearted way to do it. ... if somebody seems even a bit uncomfortable
They're for tips. If someone is uncomfortable they don't have to take them.
> It was all about showing his superiority over this sad loser working a 10-hour shift in a suit, who thought he knew a thing or two about counterfeit money. Well, he wasn't all that, and Woz sure showed him who the smartest guy in the room was.
That guy had already tested the bills and knew they were legit. If he was honestly curious how Woz got the bills he could have just asked. Instead he decided to fish around for anything he could try to rat out an innocent person for.
> No unsuspecting person would have this interaction in the first place.
But their cases would be identical from the PoV of the security guy. Some thing would "seem off" and the employee would follow them around or harass them over some legit thing that he didn't like and maybe even call the police about it.
If they think that some customers are playing games they might be a bit more on their toes and think about what they're doing, so as to not be caught in a prank. That will have a good impact on innocent people they interact with.
> [Scenario with fake bug report] then finally the customer smugly says that there never was a bug. ... made everything up. ... It's a hilarious gag, what a prankster!
That's nothing like this scenario. To try to correct it, Woz was happily using their app on his phone when an employee noticed what looked like an error. They stopped him and called him a hacker, tried to trick him into admissions, and when they finally reported and tracked down what he was doing it was just hitting back at the right time to avoid an interstitial, or whatever. The joke is that he was trying to say "it's fine" the whole time and everyone assumes he's a hacker so nobody listens, finally ending up with egg on their face when they wasted their own time.
> And you were paid for this work, no harm done, right?
Well, some to the company. I assume they'd say "maybe in the future, don't go wasting time pestering customers for something that we already knew didn't impact us." It's a teaching moment. It could save them from a lawsuit in the future if that guard thought he had the right to detain people.
> No. Fuck that. I would be furious at having my time wasted like that. And this is what Woz did. Not just once, but probably dozens of times. That's just outright sociopathic behavior,
You're overreacting. This is a perfect example of someone I'd feel needed to be pranked, because it sounds like you're ready to snap on anyone you think is mocking you and you're vastly more likely to do it to someone innocent than either a criminal or a prankster.
When it's the Secret Service, that's not "normal people", and their job is to figuratively or literally stomp anyone who doesn't sufficiently respect the immensely powerful people they insulate. Portraying them as regular Joe victim here is nonsense.
You know who's really wasting peoples time? Secret Service and a casino security guard because he tipped with legal tender that they haven't seen before, so they think he's some counterfeiter or something.
I'd fuck with authority who was too stupid to realize that $2 bills are very much legal tender.
I'm sure I when I first read this story, I thought it was hilarious. But since then, I've gained at least little bit of empathy. Think of this story from the perspective of the other people. Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as possible, just to waste their time and then pull off a "a-ha, this is actually some really obscure legal tender that I as a rich guy can afford to spend to have a cool story to tell about showing up a casino security guy".