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peregrine
Great Article. The guy had balls.
ramchip
Butler gave him a shopping list of equipment he'd need to get started, including a new laptop, military-grade crypto, and an antenna.

Out of curiosity, what's a "military-grade crypto"?

staunch
A) The writer of this article made a mistake.

B) It's a special device Max used to get some extra cash out of his non-technical partner.

DLWormwood
An out-of-date term since before the Internet went "pop." Early on, when the U.S. military was reluctant to allow civilians full access to cryptographic technology, there were still laws on the books limiting consumer e-mail clients and the like to 40-bit encryption. When Moore's Law eventually made this kind of barrier breakable in milliseconds, the laws were changed to allow 128-bit encryption to be "exported." Nowadays, there's no real limit due to most crypto research being driven overseas, although I don't remember if the arbitrary key size limit was finally removed in the U.S. proper.
jcl
I think the real question is: "What item on a shopping list could 'military-grade crypto' refer to?" The term conjures up a black-market, backroom deal for something smuggled out of an air force base, but the reality is that a lot of "military-grade crypto" software is available legally for free... and I'm guessing these guys are not above pirating anything non-free. So what were they buying? Staunch's rationales above are fairly convincing.
gcheong
Linkedin shows a Charity Majors working as a sysadmin at Linden Labs.
far33d
This is one of those articles that makes me think that Wired might be worth a subscription.
pchristensen
This one, the one about the ship full of Mazdas tipping over, etc. I'm a little suspicious of the magazine as a whole - if there a higher percentage of stories were excellent, wired would be on HN more.
kwamenum86
You can (and probably do) spend 1 dollar in much worse ways.
kirubakaran
I didn't renew my subscription because I found that I am wasting lot of time mostly wading through mostly junk.
bockris
It's less than a $1 an issue. I've been a subscriber from the beginning and my interest/satisfaction has ebbed and flowed but I've never thought about dropping my subscription.

1. It is very cheap.

2. I always find something worth reading in each issue.

3. I harbor the fantasy that a full set in very good condition will be worth something one day. ;-)

brandnewlow
The money quote, from the last page:

"I couldn't figure it out; what is this guy doing? Why doesn't he just go get a job? Then it dawned on me, many years later: Max just likes to hack."