Yes, thank you! Our whole family of nerds enjoyed it and I had to explain quite a few things to daughter but not the over head projector at least, she did bump into that tech in school for some art project.
She just installed linux on the laptop for university study and got to hear about what people used before "more" and "less" :-)
I just bought one a few months ago after putting it off for years. He sent the most charming hand written note and a series of selfies proving that he personally packed it! A true gem.
I love that he’s still doing that - he did the same thing back then: selfies, lots of fun little notes on the packaging, stories about taking the package by bicycle to the nearest post office, and even assurances about his neighborhood’s political leanings (overwhelmingly anti-Bush).
I got one from him a couple of years ago. He even sent me photos while packing and shipping, and a handwritten note along with the bottle. An absolute stand-up guy.
I actually immensely appreciated the way he is totally human, didn't even had to go beyond the stage behaviour because I believe that's the marvellous part!
It's a whole thing, the whole experience, the whole Him being himself, beauty and art mixed together in real cyberspace.
One of the goons put a phone showing a timer on stage, hoping it might help keep me on time. Alas its screensaver kicked in, and I figured that the dead screen was my fault.
Note to myself: Next talk, bring analog clock. Old darkroom timer.
I saw him live in a presentation he gave in Chicago, early 90s. He and his book are the cause of my switching from a very young PhD in thermodynamics career to going back to school for CS, then working in the latter field until retirement, years back. I also read his Silicon Snake Oil book, as soon as it came out, which he - himself - publicly claimed to have been in error, in parts, sometimes, but about which I now think - looking at X, TruthSocial, TikTok, etc. - that may, in fact, has been premonitory...
> Silicon Snake Oil book, as soon as it came out, which he - himself - publicly claimed to have been in error, in parts, sometimes, but about which I now think - looking at X, TruthSocial, TikTok, etc. - that may, in fact, has been premonitory...
It wasn’t really premonitory. More technophobic. It’s understandable in 1995 to have written it as few could envision what we have today.
"I bought this person's book too. I didn't know they were still alive. I really enjoyed reading The Cuckoo's Egg—it was such a fun read. They really have a way with words
What a fascinating video. What a treat to hear him talk.
Much of my excitement has been dying off due to the commercialization of the hacker community, the culture war, and the constant legislative losses for privacy and effective ownership of goods you purchase because they've code in them you often cannot legally circumvent the "digital lock" on.
I'm curious what can be done to get it back. It seems the more I care, the more I get jaded due to the constant loss of freedom with tech.
the story really comes full circle for me now. i've read the book in the 90s and recently listened to hess's POV via a ccc talk (https://youtu.be/USDNMWZsR5o auto subbed/dubbed video here)
great nostalgia for when the internet was still amazing
One of my favorite books is "The Cuckoo's Egg". I read it at least yearly. Cliff Stoll has had an incredible impact on my interests. I'm happy to see him doing talks.
And my thanks to you, Peaceful Lulz. I had fun writing that book, and occasionally do a talks. Couldn’t resist a 40th anniversary spoutathon at defcon! -Cliff
I read your book when I was ten years old! I was later stoked to find our computer system at school was a Unix machine, so I could try some of the commands you explained in the story, like ps and sendmail.
A friend put me onto The Cuckoo's Egg, and that's where I first met Cliff. And honestly, half the protagonists in hacker fiction can't hold a candle to him.
I had shivers most of the time during the talk, it was touching me from the inside and flipping me back like a latex glove. And while I knew your story I confess I listened to you for the first time.
It was the most amazing cyber space trip ever, feeling those copper lines and understanding you could interface with their content.
You simply represent what a hacker is, I'm getting older and loosing motivation and creativity, but after hearing you I swear I will never give that up and I promise I will keep the hardcore digging for those cents.
And my warm thanks to you, Giov. As you realize, in that talk I probably covered 5 percent of what actually happened. But that's storytelling.
Like you, as I've grown older, I cherish those times when my old-school skills are still useful - whether in computing, physics, or electronics. And there's so many new goodies that I'm never bored.
Anyways - how often do you get a chance to show a slide rule to a thousand people?
Cheers, -Cliff
It's been a few years - and I guess decades - since I read Cliff's book. One thing I recall is his journey from a Berkeley hippie to a man dealing with the military and men in suits and realizing that they are also good and necessary people. And also becoming a family man if I remember correctly.
It's a really important part of the story in my mind of Cliff growing up - sort of - as part of the experience.
Yes, Xyz, you got it right. I started out as an apolitical Berkeley techie (not exactly a hippie) and came to realize that the government and, yes, the military were necessary and important to preserve the community that I was living in. It's easy to scribble "Stop the CIA" on Berkeley stop-signs; but who's going to inform our government about what's happening in the world? I did a lot of growing-up during that chase.
As Bob Segar said, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.
I think the actual curve of "rebellious hacker sort" eventually comes into contact with "orderly military type" and how a person chooses to deal with that interaction more or less determines the next 50+ years of their lives. I've seen your bottles around, and maybe someday when my bank account has fewer pressing purchases on it, I'll get one! (Unless your bottles also come with three wishes?)
My kids don't take the advice of anyone who has Kleinbottles in their crawlspace, fdsa. And I doubt if removing those glass manifolds would have much effect. -C
The PBS Nova episode about Stoll was the literal starting point of my discovery of the internet.
Because of the show, my next year in university I signed up for an elective CompSci course (I was an English Literature major) about threat assessment. Part of our course involved browsing the RISKS Forum newsgroup on the Sparc Stations at the University of Toronto Engineering Annex.
That episode was also the beginning of my fascination with telecom equipment, which I got the chance to use professionally for about a year in 1998-1999. There's a telephone museum about an hour from where I live that still has a working mechanical switch that you can dial on and see it working.
A coworker suggested that I read The Cuckoo's Egg and I sorta shrugged it off. When I got around to reading it, I was pretty happy that it exists. It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet. You can skip all the descriptions about how tech works, which are included for normies. Imagine not using passwords or just using 'password' or all the other stuff that we did when we were young and stupid. Then imagine government agencies doing the same. What? Yep. That's what the book is about.
It wasn't quite a time of innocence, more like a time of trust-through-ignorance. The entire network was built on people who relied on each other for connectivity, software, and support. I once got slapped down for suggesting that we put passwords on an astronomy computer: "What have we got to hide?". (Turned out that someone had set up a bulletin board server on that system, without anyone's knowledge.) Cheers, -Cliff
I watched the talk and you had quite a lot of run-ins with feds.
It seems they kind of had some idea about this stuff especially after what you uncovered. There was a movie from 1983 called "WarGames" !?!?
Why oh why cyberspace was only recognised as 5th operational domain only in 2016? Why do we have all kinds of cyber regulations kicking in past 3-4 years (well GDPR was already 10 years ago).
I guess you don't have the answers (asking Cliff Stoll but whoever else feels like responding I will be happy as well) for that but I think it still a fun question to ask. I obviously don't want to call out anyone stupid but somehow I cannot believe it took all that time to grow and become what it is today with all the regulations and "important" people recognising the issue.
I'm European so when I read your book I read the first time about the NSA and I totally got the wrong impression of them, might also be, that they changed a lot since then
> "It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet."
It wasn't that long ago where the network traffic of every website was transmitted in the clear via http, not https. Literally anyone at a coffee shop could listen to the WiFi network and see everything being sent and received in plain text. GMail didn't move to https until 2010, and I think it was one of the first webmail sites to do it. Browsers only started flagging non-https sites just in the past few years.
A thoroughly enjoyable watch - he's a natural disrupter. It is a reminder to focus on principles rather than any latest fashion. It is quite refreshing in the current AI torrent.
79 comments
[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 18.3 ms ] threadShe just installed linux on the laptop for university study and got to hear about what people used before "more" and "less" :-)
Thank you!
And I celebrate every Klein Bottle order by walking around my backyard garden … puts me in the right mood.
Cheers, Cliff
I actually immensely appreciated the way he is totally human, didn't even had to go beyond the stage behaviour because I believe that's the marvellous part!
It's a whole thing, the whole experience, the whole Him being himself, beauty and art mixed together in real cyberspace.
Note to myself: Next talk, bring analog clock. Old darkroom timer.
Cheers, Cliff
It wasn’t really premonitory. More technophobic. It’s understandable in 1995 to have written it as few could envision what we have today.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CliffStoll
"Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated | 1676 points by CliffStoll 3 months ago | 260 comments"
Much of my excitement has been dying off due to the commercialization of the hacker community, the culture war, and the constant legislative losses for privacy and effective ownership of goods you purchase because they've code in them you often cannot legally circumvent the "digital lock" on.
I'm curious what can be done to get it back. It seems the more I care, the more I get jaded due to the constant loss of freedom with tech.
great nostalgia for when the internet was still amazing
I had shivers most of the time during the talk, it was touching me from the inside and flipping me back like a latex glove. And while I knew your story I confess I listened to you for the first time.
It was the most amazing cyber space trip ever, feeling those copper lines and understanding you could interface with their content.
You simply represent what a hacker is, I'm getting older and loosing motivation and creativity, but after hearing you I swear I will never give that up and I promise I will keep the hardcore digging for those cents.
You are our father.
Like you, as I've grown older, I cherish those times when my old-school skills are still useful - whether in computing, physics, or electronics. And there's so many new goodies that I'm never bored.
Anyways - how often do you get a chance to show a slide rule to a thousand people? Cheers, -Cliff
It's a really important part of the story in my mind of Cliff growing up - sort of - as part of the experience.
As Bob Segar said, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.
www.kleinbottle.com
is this an overlooked DE pun by Cliff? is that even possible?
When I was CSO at Relativity, I conducted security awareness training for all, and gave each one a copy of Cuckoo’s Egg.
The Defcon ham radio village was packed -- I picked up a lot of info on meshtastic. Last night set up a node in my attic.
The talk was wonderful.
w8lvn
Because of the show, my next year in university I signed up for an elective CompSci course (I was an English Literature major) about threat assessment. Part of our course involved browsing the RISKS Forum newsgroup on the Sparc Stations at the University of Toronto Engineering Annex.
That episode was also the beginning of my fascination with telecom equipment, which I got the chance to use professionally for about a year in 1998-1999. There's a telephone museum about an hour from where I live that still has a working mechanical switch that you can dial on and see it working.
It seems they kind of had some idea about this stuff especially after what you uncovered. There was a movie from 1983 called "WarGames" !?!?
Why oh why cyberspace was only recognised as 5th operational domain only in 2016? Why do we have all kinds of cyber regulations kicking in past 3-4 years (well GDPR was already 10 years ago).
I guess you don't have the answers (asking Cliff Stoll but whoever else feels like responding I will be happy as well) for that but I think it still a fun question to ask. I obviously don't want to call out anyone stupid but somehow I cannot believe it took all that time to grow and become what it is today with all the regulations and "important" people recognising the issue.
It wasn't that long ago where the network traffic of every website was transmitted in the clear via http, not https. Literally anyone at a coffee shop could listen to the WiFi network and see everything being sent and received in plain text. GMail didn't move to https until 2010, and I think it was one of the first webmail sites to do it. Browsers only started flagging non-https sites just in the past few years.
It already seems far fetched, honestly.