NonOrthodox
They, like we here in HN, organize themselves around those ideas. Sometimes they act together against someone that goes against their values, like they just did to Aaron, and sometimes they act towards other positive goals like they did in Egypt. It is not about being cool, having fun or anything like that. That is just one of the ways they attract kids and other people to join them in their attacks and other actions. There is no central leadership, no hierarchy, but all their actions are done following certain values and ethics that you cannot really grasp unless you are part of it, just like HN.
Although they don't have leaders, at least in their IRC, there are moderators, that, at least during the leaks, when there were over 3 thousand people in a single IRC channel, would lock the channel, summarize arguments, add questions and unlock it, while they were selecting targets. But usually that only happened when there were that many people and too many trolls spamming the chat.
They are people, from all ages that act by their shared values.
The video is long, but you can get a good grasp of the product in the first few minutes. The rest of the video is in-depth discussion on how they started thinking of how to do it, how they think they will reach the companies and also inner workings on how the software work.
Here is an introduction page that he posted for newcomers: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?page_id=288 You can see that there is many topics under "Want to get more done?"
Though I know that most books are a waste of time, these were actually filled with great information, in my opinion:
Can't wait for being able to edit/delete crates. Would be nice too to be able to edit profile.
By the way, Let's Crate email list that I subscribed to a couple days ago failed to send me any news at all, if I hadn't checked here I wouldn't see the launch.
Here is another article that might be useful: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/03301?gko=16442
One might say plans are useless, but that isn't true. I find myself changing them from time to time, but they are the best tool I have to manage my time and life and check on my progress to reach the dream I have.
All I do is keep checking on them and constantly thinking if they need change or what progress I am having. Everyday I spend at least a few minutes reflecting on them.
This is a good example of goals: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=84
I even did some drawing and thought of solar pannels and batteries to keep it going non-stop. What demotivated me was the fact I'm living in Brazil and normal filesharing is still much easier and non-risky...
Anyway, a wifi box like this would be much more secure if done right. A complementary idea I also thought of was to make the boxes communicate with each other, much like a cloud you could access from any reachable access point.
Maybe it won't be this company who will succeed at doing it, maybe there will be lots of companies doing it, but I can certainly see that someday we will have this kind of option. I just hope it happens sooner than later.