Originally the word "hacker" made no distinction between the two meanings. This site is pretty old, so you're right, it was intended in the original "Kevin Mitnik" sense (the original hacker, who ironically would fall outside of the modern definition)
The modern acception focused on online computer security came much later. That meaning is neither the one used in the name of this site nor the one that would be relevant to this conversation.
To summarize: today's hackers are also yesterday's hackers, but yesterday's hackers may or may not be modern hackers.
I essentially do a 1 click deployment for my personal site with Cloudflare.
I don't want to deal with the cloud infra for my personal site.
I could, I've done it in corporate, I've done it for my startup 2 years ago.
But I'm rusty, I don't know what the latest people are using for configuration, etc.
Because there is 1 click with CF or Vercel and I don't have to think about it—I don't.
If they increase their price it likely wouldn't be enough friction for me dust off the rust.
I think this is the relation.
I'm not locked in, it's just HTML pages, but I am through my own habit energy, tech changing, and what I want to put effort into, which is not infra and serving my site.
> Anything that the author said in his emails could have just as easily been said by someone else
That's not true. He mentions that he is the owner of the books official websites, which are registered with Google, presumably with all of his personal and billing information.
It would take 2 seconds for anyone at Google to confirm this.
> It would take 2 seconds for anyone at Google to confirm this.
Not really... Google is literally too big, and the fact that they've offshored and/or automated support away and compartmentalized it all where no single IC employee could possibly do much.
I had a billing/tax issue come up with my small biz Google Workspace, and I was getting nowhere via the normal support channels... So I asked my brother in-law who literally works at Google (but not in that team) for help. He could not help me as he had no idea who or what department could handle that and neither did his team members, and it would take weeks apparently to find the right person. I'm not the only paying Google customer with that experience. Google products are great, until you run into an issue you need to talk to a human.
They could have been Slack if they didn't transmogrify it into a social media platform (Google+) and then throw out the baby with the bathwater when it failed.
I’m talking about something much more fundamental, the entire company would pretty much implode within 24 hours (or at most a week) if they couldnt verify who is who.
You're really giving credit in the wrong areas. Google is impressive for its ability to exist beyond the point of dysfunction. It's simply not the case that any Googler would need to verify the identity of any other any more than it is necessary for every server to verify the identity of every other. They only need to verify the identify of the tiny subset they are communicating with at any given time. This doesn't mean everyone has access to a coherent org chart, or that one even exists.
> Ask their managers? But then how do their managers verify?
It's a hierarchical org chart. If you're really not sure ask Sundar.
It's likely any Googler can verify the identity of any other by looking up their username but it's unlikely that the same tool would do something like tell you how the YouTube recommendation algorithm works or who would know that.
They will know the names of frequent collaborators and something about the scope of relevant work but it's not like everyone at Google needs intimate knowledge of every workstream. At that scale it's unlikely anyone has the full picture.
We agree an org chart of some kind probably exists. We disagree on the capabilities. For example I am not confident that it has a concept of a team and if it does that a team would map to a product or feature.
Going from person to team is fairly easy, but going from team to person is hard. That is, you can often confirm a person is a member of a particular team or organization just by looking up their email address, but the reverse direction of finding the right point of contact for a particular team or organization can be difficult.
Searching for the tree root starting from a tree leaf is easy, but searching for the right leaf starting from the root takes a lot more effort.
Aside from the huge array of stuff they've built in house, the "List of mergers and acquisitions by Alphabet" wikipedia page has 264 entries. Some of those bought other companies.
>If googlers dont have an internal org chart they can check, then how do they verify who is on what team?
You really think some guy in some offshore office for low pay, with his boss hounding at him about his KPIs, is going to go out of his way to bother with this?
Of course it's not. Why look at anything positive or actually do something when you can instead engage in the tired tropes like looking at the past with rose tinted glasses as a way of comforting yourself.
You can be as positive as you want to be, and should absolutely take action and do things to better socialize.
But to pretend it’s remotely the same as it was 40 years ago is utterly ridiculous. Now when you do such things like a running club you are joining a group of very self-selecting people who for the most part have a certain personality type.
You simply do not get the diversity in group experiences as there used to be. It was either go through social discomfort or sit alone bored with zero social interaction. Now the friction to get that social dopamine hit is extremely low bar, and going beyond it the bar has been raised considerably.
Not to mention doing stuff like running club or rock climbing just feeds into the hyper-scheduled world the west has become. Spontaneous social interaction is important too, and those third places are increasingly scarce and involve far more friction. Which again self-selects for certain personality types and lifestyles.
For some people these changes are positive - much easier to find niche activities to do with others. For other people they are extremely negative.
>Now when you do such things like a running club you are joining a group of very self-selecting people
I'd disagree with this pretty strongly. I do workshops at a makerspace in Berlin, which is in itself a pretty nerdy place but we've got everything from pensioners to middle aged moms to obviously a lot of people from the university or tech work.
In much smaller cities not just here you'll find chess clubs, poetry slam groups, church choirs what have you. None of it hyper-scheduled or commercialized. I can't speak to what this was like 40 years ago I wasn't alive then but there's no shortage. I think the biggest difference is, people don't move. In the Western world mobility is at an all time low. If you were young and lived in a place where these opportunities didn't exist people literally just packed their bags and relocated. In the words of Morgan Freeman: https://youtu.be/oZcSivXEGys
I definitely agree that a big part of it is how immobile people are these days.
What I meant by hyperscheduled is that typically these activities revolve around setting a schedule in advance for everyone to commit to and plan around. This sort of thing simply does not work for me. At all. Maybe once every couple months or so.
For example my local makerspace requires at least days (if not weeks) advance booking for most tools. When I’m in a project mood or want to meet up with friends to hack on something it will be more of a “hey let’s go figure this out, meet you there in an hour!” situation.
What I personally miss are the social clubs/spaces - heck even neighborhood pubs - that used to exist as simple meeting points. Whoever was there happened to be there and you’d tend to slowly make more social connections over time. You show up when you felt like showing up, and probably find a handful of casual friends there no matter when you’d go.
There is an extreme dearth of such impromptu meeting points/gathering hubs at least where I live. If you want to meet with friends you typically are going to schedule it a few days out - even if it’s meeting up for drinks after work. With work from home that’s even far less of a thing since even coworkers are geographically dispersed vs. cutting out of work 30 minutes early to go grab drinks at the bar around the corner.
By the time I get through my exhausting work calendar each week all I want is some control over my day back - and let the day go by feels vs a calendar. This is the largest difference other than social media I’ve felt over the past few decades.
That's "just life" unfortunately. By the time most people reach their mid-30s, they accumulate enough commitments that they have to plan things in advance or they just don't happen.
If a friend turned up randomly and unannounced at my door and asked if I want to go to the pub, they have the following barriers to overcome:
I'm out for 10 hours a day during the work week and I'm asleep another ~8h. In the remaining 6h I want to go to the gym, I have to eat, I have to run errands, I have to spend time with my wife and in the remaining time I might just want some alone time. Odds are I'd have to turn my friend away, which would make me feel bad, even though I'd have gladly joined him in the pub if I could plan for it. And I have no kids! If I had kids, the odds are even worse.
We all wish we could be back in our 20s when we had all the freedom and none of the commitments, but the truth is that for 95% of people this isn't possible. When you are in uni (or fresh out), you have all the time and energy, but (generally) no money. So you can spend a lot of time with friends who are in a similar position. By mid-life (30-55), you have money and energy, but no time. And in your winter years, you have money and time, but no energy left.
In each of these phases, you can try to go against the flow and experience friction all the time, or you can try to make the most of it and adapt.
If you absolutely desire the freeform approach you describe, perhaps you need to step up and establish the clubs and spaces you'd like and select for members who have a similar desire.
Most spaces in cities have to cater to the lowest common denominator, and simply wouldn't be able to function without strict scheduling rules. It'd be patently unfair if the 20 year old uni student hogged the equipment when you turn up for your 2 hours of free time that you planned a week in advance, wouldn't it?
The modern acception focused on online computer security came much later. That meaning is neither the one used in the name of this site nor the one that would be relevant to this conversation.
To summarize: today's hackers are also yesterday's hackers, but yesterday's hackers may or may not be modern hackers.
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