Classic. Remember, the BOFH is no longer the "operator" of some systems at a university. Now he's your ISP, your search engine, your social media services, and many other important things you rely on.
"Well, the answer is, we do nothing FOR users. We do things TO users. It's a fine distinction, but an important one all the same."
The situation has changed. There is less opportunities for the kind of evil the BOFH is known for. The operator used to be one guy doing stuff no one understand, maybe not a high salary, but a huge amount of individual power when it comes to computers.
The situation is different now, computers are serious business, and the higher ups are keeping a close look, some of them even know a thing or two about computers. There are external audits, surveillance, and paperwork. It is much harder to wipe one guy's data just because he pissed you off and get away with it.
Bureaucracy is the new evil. While the new BOFH can't easily wipe off your work anymore, he definitely can ask you to fill up a multi-page form of conflicting requirements in order to access a resource you need. That's the process you know.
The situation hasn't changed at all. There are tons of compliance auditors, and they can write all the policy they want, but they can't audit the day to day.
When I was at Facebook, there was a very strict official policy and warning in Bootcamp that "The security team knows when you impersonate a user, and you will be fired if it's not for good reason". I still saw people impersonating their girlfriends, their ex girlfriends, their crushes; None of them got noticed or even fired, and there was tacit acknowledgement that it was widespread. This was the same company that encouraged people to install their root certificate so they could MITM your connections[1].
You need to be worried about both. There's probably more banal evil than there was, but it's not because the assholes with petty power have disappeared.
All that said; The BOFH stories were never about the kind of evil you actually find in technical circles. There were juvenile power fantasy about being an evil trickster god; They were catharsis about all the times you are angry and frustrated at your coworkers; Yes, you want to hit them, shock them, throw them down the stairs - The same way that you wish you had a rocket launcher to blast the car ahead of you off the freeway. It's ridiculous power fantasy, and it's kind of shameful that tech has so many people that view it as "unhealthy" rather than crass for the sake of being crass; It is over the line twice.
> It is much harder to wipe one guy's data just because he pissed you off and get away with it.
The point parent was making is that corporations are doing that, since corpos are now persons, thanks to Citizens United, any argument about this being bureaucratic, autocratic or what not, is moot.
Fact is, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. frequently deactivate and wipe user accounts with disastous consequences for the victims.
> not a high salary, but a huge amount of individual power
He's now a voluntary moderator for Reddit, Discord, etc. Anywhere there are users he can lord it over and stroke his ego. Heck, he'd probably pay you to _let_ him moderate.
BOFH was funny because it showcased the technical possibilities when applied in the worst possible way, just like lots of comedy today. Remembering a bunch of those stories, they were pretty much highly unlikely even back in the day (tracing phone calls — many of these stories were redirecting calls to other numbers — was possible even back in 80s).
To whom it may concern, the TN state "BOFH" license plate should be available now. I've had it for 30 years, but i'm not able to drive anymore and the truck died, so I didn't renew it last month.
In about 1998, I was driving down the highway in Mississippi and saw a tag: "UID ZRO". I had a passenger at the time and said hey, I'm going to pass this guy, but tell me if he looks like a Unix admin. Passenger was familiar with the type and said yes, he did.
Back when computer expertise was hard to come by, so admins could lord over users. The Internet has made these people extinct. SNL parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25J3u3P-HHg
Most users only bother with quick solutions for whatever problem they have, not with any deeper understanding. They get the kind of expertise where the BOFH only has to sit on the sidelines with a bucket of popcorn, watch the user shred their own system and offer a pristine replacement with all their local data gone.
The amount of times I have seen users click past pages of apt install ouput after messing with the package sources has been well above zero.
I had a run-in with the BOFH in real life many years ago as a university student where he was working. I'd messed up something network-related on a lab PC, and noticed that the NIC was now in promiscuous mode for some reason. I did a bit of idle poking around and pinged a few interesting hostnames I found. I was called into the the BOFH's office the next day and interrogated. He glared at me as I explained, and eventually let me off with a stern warning, though the PC was snatched from the lab before I made it back there and never seen again.
Readit News
"Well, the answer is, we do nothing FOR users. We do things TO users. It's a fine distinction, but an important one all the same."
https://www.chinet.com/html/bofh/lastbofh.html
The situation is different now, computers are serious business, and the higher ups are keeping a close look, some of them even know a thing or two about computers. There are external audits, surveillance, and paperwork. It is much harder to wipe one guy's data just because he pissed you off and get away with it.
Bureaucracy is the new evil. While the new BOFH can't easily wipe off your work anymore, he definitely can ask you to fill up a multi-page form of conflicting requirements in order to access a resource you need. That's the process you know.
When I was at Facebook, there was a very strict official policy and warning in Bootcamp that "The security team knows when you impersonate a user, and you will be fired if it's not for good reason". I still saw people impersonating their girlfriends, their ex girlfriends, their crushes; None of them got noticed or even fired, and there was tacit acknowledgement that it was widespread. This was the same company that encouraged people to install their root certificate so they could MITM your connections[1].
You need to be worried about both. There's probably more banal evil than there was, but it's not because the assholes with petty power have disappeared.
All that said; The BOFH stories were never about the kind of evil you actually find in technical circles. There were juvenile power fantasy about being an evil trickster god; They were catharsis about all the times you are angry and frustrated at your coworkers; Yes, you want to hit them, shock them, throw them down the stairs - The same way that you wish you had a rocket launcher to blast the car ahead of you off the freeway. It's ridiculous power fantasy, and it's kind of shameful that tech has so many people that view it as "unhealthy" rather than crass for the sake of being crass; It is over the line twice.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18202880/facebook-researc...
The point parent was making is that corporations are doing that, since corpos are now persons, thanks to Citizens United, any argument about this being bureaucratic, autocratic or what not, is moot.
Fact is, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. frequently deactivate and wipe user accounts with disastous consequences for the victims.
Most comman is "malicious compliance"
Just do EXACTLY what management tells us to do... things tend to go to crap real fast.
He's now a voluntary moderator for Reddit, Discord, etc. Anywhere there are users he can lord it over and stroke his ego. Heck, he'd probably pay you to _let_ him moderate.
This torch isn't passed, it's taken. Shortly after some off-label use of quicklime.
I loved that plate, it looked cool in real life; and I kept it, it’s proudly hanging in my NL office now.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/15/on_call_500_columns_c...
[1] https://www.ashleevance.com
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/01/space_economy_vance/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashlee_Vance
Deleted Comment
I saw "SIGKILL" a few years ago and smiled to myself but didn't have occasion to speak to the owner (driving at the time).
I've had "31337" since '98 (also old) and had just a couple of people mention it to me.
I've been following Simon Travaglia since the 1980s.
I don't know if he still has his old site up, but he also had a bunch of amusing views on Kiwi culture.
especially so in the early days of computing, from whence the stories come; where "reliability" was a laugh
The amount of times I have seen users click past pages of apt install ouput after messing with the package sources has been well above zero.
2) And they had -- remarkably current, today of all days -- pagers.
The Bastard Operator from Hell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881524 - Oct 2023 (2 comments)
The Bastard Operator from Hell (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29590667 - Dec 2021 (98 comments)
The Bastard Operator From Hell (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21903668 - Dec 2019 (94 comments)